Cry of the Hawk

Shad took off, then turned after a few steps. “You coming, Jonah? We ain’t got a whole lotta time. Let that bastard die on his own. He’ll take what he knows of your boys with him.”

“Listen to that old man, Hook. He ain’t stupid like you,” Wiser spat blood up, coughing. “You’ll never see the rest of your family again, you simple heathen.”

Jonah gazed down at Wiser. Then turned aside, finding Sweete anxious. Maybe the old man was right. Leave Wiser to bleed like a stuck pig here in the dirt. Better to get in the saddle and ride—

“Jonah!”

As the old mountain man bellowed his name, Hook whirled back around. Finding Wiser pulling something from his boot—a double-bored, over-under derringer.

It spit flame, burning a tongue of pain along Jonah’s neck as he brought his pistol up, firing at the instant Wiser’s second barrel erupted.

Wiser’s grunt exploded from his lungs as Hook put a hand to the damp ribbon of pain low on his neck. Jonah brought his hand away as Shad stepped up. Sweete peered down at the body. “This one’s gone. You’ll live—if we get you out of here now.”

48

July-August, 1868

IN FIVE DAYS they had crossed the great, black-domed expanse of wilderness that “welcomed” any man suicidal enough to try that stretch of prairie south of the Platte River from Fort Kearney into the Smoky Hill country of Kansas.

Shad Sweete had driven them hard with what little darkness they had left that first night, leaving behind Dobe Town and its dusty huts and splatterings of yellow light as he steered them beneath the great dark map of the sky. Due south. Keeping the North Star over his right shoulder. Where he kept turning to look from time to time. Looking behind too, for he was sure they were following.

Yet as the sun tore itself in a bloody greeting from the bowels of the earth that first morning, the old trapper had still seen no sign of pursuit. Sweete led the others down into the cottonwood and willow and alder of the Little Blue River. For the next half hour they kept their horses plodding the middle of that stream, east for a ways until he found the mouth of a ravine that he thought would do.

It was there he told them to dismount, unsaddle, and picket the horses close by on the good grass just up the draw. When they were all back in the shade, he let the rest fall quickly asleep.

Shad woke Jonah Hook a few hours later as the sun climbed halfway to midsky. Without many words spoken between them, he showed the Confederate where to stretch out in the tall grass of the riverbank and watch their backtrail over an immense expanse of country laid out before him.

“Don’t you go back to sleep, Jonah.”

Hook rubbed the grit from his eyes with both sets of knuckles. “I won’t.”

“Hattie counting on you to keep your nose in the wind and eyes on the skyline, son.”

“I ain’t let her down yet. Go grab you some sleep, old man. I’ll be fine.”

Sweete stirred later when he heard footsteps. Pulling his pistol, he rolled over and pointed the weapon at the mouth of the narrow ravine as Hook was creeping in. “Someone coming?” he asked in a harsh whisper, his blood pumping full in his ears as he sat up.

“No,” Hook whispered back. “Just come to get Fordham. His turn to stand watch.”

Shad had glanced at the sky, finding the sun halfway to the far horizon, on the other side of the ravine now. The Southerner had stood a good five hours or better.

Yet he felt sorrier still for Fordham as the Mormon was rousted from his sound slumber. Neither Shad nor the Danite deserter had slept in more than two days before their sudden appearance in Dobe Town, coming east from Laramie, hoping for some word of Jonah Hook or the small splinter group of Danites the Confederate was searching for. Instead of finding word among those huts clustered along the Platte River, Fordham had recognized two of Boothog Wiser’s men still in the watering hole that dark morning, just about the time the shooting broke out somewhere down the long, rutted main street in that squalid little town.

By that time it had already been one hell of a ride for the two of them, tearing away from Laramie after a second of Jubilee Usher’s bounty hunters showed up at the fort, following Fordham’s trail that far. And before that second Danite died, he had spilled a little of the plans that Usher and Wiser were moving in separate battalions, north through Kansas—with orders to rendezvous at Laramie by midsummer, where they would celebrate the capture of Riley Fordham.

And for some reason that had again made the hairs stand at the back of Shad Sweete’s neck. The two leaders dividing their command made the old mountain man feel the need for pushing east as fast and as long as their horses could carry them. A week of solid riding, brutal on his old body. Swapping lathered animals for fresh at road ranches along the way. Pushing faster, compelled by some need to hurry. Arriving in time.