Cry of the Hawk

He prayed they would not be faced with that.

Yet he knew Wiser was not the sort to let Hattie stay with him. Never mind that it was Hattie … or any young woman for that matter. Boothog Wiser didn’t seem like the kind of man who took easily to losing at all. Especially losing everything.

He had a pocket filled with Wiser’s money. And he had the reward Jubilee Usher had promised to the man who found and killed Riley Fordham. There was no doubt in Jonah’s mind that Wiser would be coming to get it all back.

With Boothog’s money, Jonah could get someone to take care of Hattie for a few weeks. Maybe a few months. However long it would take to double back and ride west to Fort Laramie—where he would find Usher and … reclaim Gritta from her captor.

His stomach went sour.

Then he looked at Hattie as they pushed through the short door into the fragrant livery. Beyond, a half mile away or more on the flat prairie, he heard someone playing a mouth harp. Maybe a lonely soldier. Maybe one of Wiser’s men in their camp by the river. Jonah could not be sure. He only had to find two horses now. Any two. Saddle them. And get lost going east.

Jonah set his daughter gently down among the aromatic hay in a vacant stall, listening to the snorts and pawing of hooves. He lit a single lamp and hung it on a nail, quickly looking over the stable, finding bit and saddle for two mounts. And hung from a nail some short lengths of rope that he would use to lash her atop her mount for their hard ride.

Better that they head south. He knew some of that country: the Republican, Solomon, Saline, and down to the Smoky Hill. Keep Hattie safe until he could finish with Usher and bring Hattie’s mother home.

Get the girl safe and then he’d have to return to the Platte. It was here he would come to deal with Boothog Wiser.

After that—farther west. To the place called Laramie. Then he’d finally look in the eye of Jubilee Usher.

But first, he had to get Hattie atop this horse, tied on, and led out onto the trackless prairie, praying no man would follow them into the night as black as the heart of hell itself.

47

July, 1868

WISER SENT HASTINGS with a half dozen of his scouts around to the back.

Boothog himself would go in the front door of the livery stable. Backed up by four of his own men.

He knew they enjoyed this. Every last one of them. He had seen it burn in their eyes more than once. Whenever Wiser had been crossed and wronged and felt the burning need for taking revenge on one of the men. The rest—especially these most trusted by him—they all watched unflinchingly as Wiser had taken his pound of flesh each and every time.

He could remember seeing that love of it in their eyes. They had enjoyed watching the torture and the blood, the begging by the victim.

And Boothog Wiser knew they would take no small pleasure in what he, Wiser, now had in store for this simple homespun Southern sodbuster named Jonah Hook.

Wiser figured he had given Hastings enough time to get around by the run-down stable’s double-wing back door, a stable that slightly listed to one side with age and the incessant prairie wind.

Silently moving to the small door, he tested the latch and hinges gently for noise. He wanted to be in the stable before Hook knew he had arrived. As Wiser was pushing in on the short door, a hollow shot echoed from within.

Wiser froze. A quick exchange of gunfire, intermingled with a pair of grunts. Then shouts swamping over everything from out back. Calling for him.

He glanced at his own men, then shoved his way into the stable, both hands filled with the fancy pistols.

It was dark in here—dimly lit at best. Four horses milled about, pawing, rearing at the noise. Some gun smoke hung in a murky haze at the far end of the stable, swaying with the rocking light of the disturbed lantern hung upon a long nail. Hay dust stirred, making it hard to see. Wiser could not make out what was happening.

“Major Wiser!”

It was Hastings’s voice.

“Captain! What’s going on? Where is he?”

“He’s in here! Got two of my men! Get the sonofabitch!”

Wiser read the panic in Hastings’s voice. Strange that a man as proven as the captain should express so much fear. Perhaps only the tension coming now at the end of a long scout. Then Wiser’s belly convinced him of something different. Hastings would know, better than any, about the enemy they were up against.

“What’s he got for weapons, Captain?”

“Those two pistols—all I saw him carrying.”

“He’s got something more,” someone said from the darkness.

“What?”

“Dunno.”

“Shuddup! Now get your boys to rush him,” Wiser ordered, with his pistol waving two of his own to go down either side of the center aisle between the two rows of stables.

Boothog could read more than reluctance on their faces. He pointed the pistol at one of them. The man moved on into the murky darkness, carefully, his head pulled back in his shoulders like a gun-shy tortoise.

Wiser watched as a pair of Hastings’s men argued with their captain at the far end of things.