Cry of the Hawk

Shad turned back to Connor. “You really think Hook was trying to desert?”

“Said he was heading out.”

Sweete slapped both palms down on Connor’s desk. “But—do you believe he was going to do it, in the cups like he was?”

“I can’t have any man deserting now—or even bragging that he’s going to do it.”

“Man what brags he’s going to do something while he’s got a bellyful of saddle varnish, is only letting his whiskey do his talking for him, General,” said Bridger.

Connor sighed, then looked back at the tall mountain scout. “That’s why I called you here, Sweete. You’re his friend. I don’t plan on shooting him for desertion—lord knows I should make an example out of him.”

Shad sensed a flicker of hope fill his cold belly right about then. “So here you sit, General, cogitating on how can you still make a point of him—but get him out of your hair?”

“Right, Mr. Sweete. I can’t send him back to his station with Captain Lybe. He’s a poor influence, shall we say.”

“How ’bout if I take him under my wing, so to speak, General?” Sweete asked.

Connor flicked his eyes at old Bridger, who smiled back with only his eyes.

“You’re heading out with me in two days, Mr. Sweete, are you not?”

“I am, General. And that boy can go with me. I’ll keep him out’n your hair. Just ask Bridger. He’s trained some of the best—like Mitch Bouyer, who’s going along. Right, Gabe?”

Bridger nodded.

“All right, Mr. Sweete,” Connor sighed, laying the knife down and sinking into the horsehide chair behind his desk. “He’s your responsibility. And if he gets one step out of line—it’ll be your ass hanging over the same fire that Confederate’s is slow-roasting over.”

No man could really blame the general for being on the edgy side these last few days as the summer mellowed. The supplies he had begged of Department Commander General Dodge had still not arrived by the first of August after Connor had assembled his troops at Laramie. It seemed that with every day of enforced waiting there since the beginning of July, Bridger had reminded Connor that the army’s campaign season was growing old. The high plains had a way of turning on a man come the autumn of the year. Better get, Bridger told the army—while the getting was good.

Connor decided he was going to wait no longer.

Through all those weeks of waiting he had been planning his expedition, deciding to assemble the campaign in three wings, all of which were to rendezvous the first of September in the Tongue River country.

The very heart of prime Sioux and Cheyenne hunting ground.

The two additional wings of Connor’s assault were already pushing their way across the plains. Colonel Nelson Cole was at the head of two regiments already moving west from Omaha without incident.

Not so with the other wing commander.

After his Sixteenth Kansas Cavalry had become disgruntled because they were forced to serve past the end of the war and threatened to mutiny to the point he had to order artillery turned on them, Colonel Samuel Walker finally got his troops under way and marched north for the Black Hills country of the Sioux.

While Cole and Walker forced their reluctant soldiers into that unknown of the northern plains, Connor could himself boast of marching north at the head of the finest cavalry then to sit a saddle in the West. Besides having enlisted such proven guides as Bridger, Sweete, and Sioux half-breed Mitch Bouyer, Connor also had along a newly formed battalion of Pawnee scouts under the capable Major Frank North, as well as Captain E. W. Nash’s contingent of Omaha and Winnebago scouts.

Using stout discipline each long summer’s day of the march, the expedition covered ground quickly. Despite the problems encountered by a train of 185 wagons, Connor was on the Powder by 14 August. It was there he ordered the first trees felled for what would be a permanent post he christened Fort Connor.

“I’m going away, I’m going away, but I’m coming back, if I go ten thousand miles,” sang the auburn-haired horseman as he and the rest let their animals pick their way through the timber-studded hills of northern Arkansas, heading south and west for what they had long known was the security of Indian Territory.

He loved to sing—especially this one, a popular song of the Confederacy.

Lemuel Wiser was a handsome man. Most might even say he was more than that: a devilishly handsome man. Striking in every way, from the slate green eyes above a perfect nose, those bow-shaped lips that made every young woman want to be kissed by him, even the long hair hung in ringlets over his ears and the collar of his canvas mackinaw.