Cry of the Hawk

“Let that be a warning to you, Major Wiser.” Usher’s voice rocked the limestone cave in the forest where they had taken refuge from a pursuing detachment of soldiers for the past week. The rain fell noisily outside the musty cave. “I never want to catch you talking to the woman again.”

Boothog glanced quickly at the fair-haired woman, her own lips swollen, bruised, and bloody—knowing Jubilee had battered her too. Behind the purple bruises and swollen lids, her eyes were like some frightened animal’s—almost willing to take a chance in trusting the handsome Boothog, to trust anyone and anything rather than continue with the daily abuse she endured from Jubilee.

“If you give me the girl, Colonel,” Wiser declared, using the honorary title Brigham Young had awarded Usher among Young’s Danites.

Usher stared incredulous at his second in command. “You are a crude animal, Major. Here for so long I had considered you above the level of these others. It is they I must watch to be sure the girl remains a virgin until the time we return to the City of the Saints.”

His breath still shallow, the burn at his cheek slowly fading. “You have what you want, Jubilee—gimme the girl. Why’s she so special to make it back there a virgin?”

Usher took one sudden step forward, instantly shutting Wiser up. “She’ll fetch a much handsomer price from a wealthy man looking for a new, young wife.” The big man turned toward the woman and began stroking her long, disheveled hair. She tried to push his hand away at first, but he caught her wrists and held them in one big paw while he went back to stroking her golden curls.

“Besides, Major Wiser. There are plenty of opportunities for you to find yourself a suitable traveling partner. The girl is just that—a girl—and I won’t stand for you copulating with her like some evil, bestial tool of the devil.”

He wanted to scream out that Usher himself was a hypocrite—but Wiser didn’t have the nerve. He could cower any of the rest of their sizable band of freebooters, either with his fists or with his quickness at the handgun he kept resting just forward of his left hip. But try Jubilee Usher? Wiser was a far smarter man than that.

Boothog swallowed his words, mumbling as the damp, fetid smell of this place invaded his nostrils once more.

“What was that you said?” Usher demanded, turning from the woman.

“It just ain’t fair, Colonel.”

Usher went back to stroking the woman’s hair, caressing the side of her face with a single finger. “No one ever said earthly life was fair, Major. It’s just up to men like you and me to make things a little more even for ourselves, and our kind, don’t you see?”

“I want—”

“Find yourself a woman, Mr. Wiser!” Usher snapped, whirling on his subordinate. At his sharp words the woman jerked back, the harsh sound echoing from the low, dripping roof of the dank cave.

“I’ll do that, Jubilee.”

“And you’ll do well to stay away from both the woman and the girl, I mind you.”

“As you order, Colonel.”

“This one,” Jubilee sighed, cupping the woman’s chin in the palm of a huge hand and gripping it hard, “she is a pretty, pretty thing. A fitting gift from God, handed exclusively to one of his most trusted servants, can’t you see? It was His will and His will alone that guided us to that farm, Major. She was waiting for me there.”

Wiser wanted to tell Usher that he was crazy—but he didn’t have the nerve. While Boothog realized he would be nothing more than a common thief and murderer with a devilishly handsome face and a charm that had lifted more petticoats and unbuttoned more bodices in the last three years than most men did in a lifetime—Jubilee Usher was something else altogether.

A drop of cold cave seepage splattered on his forehead.

The big man, the “Colonel,” really believed in what he called his divine mission, believed in his continual revelations from God, believed he alone had been chosen to wage war on any and all Gentiles in the West whom he saw as a threat to his prophet, Brigham Young.

And it was Jubilee Usher’s unshakable insanity that made him the most dangerous animal Boothog Wiser had ever known.

In the last days of summer and the first days of fall, the Shahiyena told of fighting two groups of white men who had attempted to force their way into the Black Hills country and the hunting ground north and west of the sacred Bear Butte. One group corralled its wagons, then offered one of those wagons filled with coffee and sugar and flour to the warriors if the white men were allowed to pass. The Shahiyena had allowed the white men to go on their way, knowing they were heading into Lakota land, where Red Cloud and Young Man Afraid would make things hard on them.