Cry of the Hawk

He swallowed, anxious to be on the road to Fort Leavenworth where his unit would be mustered out, from there on his own to southern Missouri. But not anxious enough to rip himself from the warm security this big man had offered during Jonah’s brief sojourn on the high plains. This, he felt, was something to be done carefully. He stared down at the medicine wheel.

“You can wear it round your neck—or keep it in your plunder. Its power will be with you no matter what, son,” Sweete explained. With the scuffing of boots on wood, his eyes flicked over to watch the officers emerge from Colonel H. E. Maynadier’s office, turn, and salute in leave-taking.

Jonah felt suddenly like hugging the big man, but such a thing just wasn’t his way. Things were too much of a rush for him at the moment. Instead of embracing the old trapper, he held out his hand, reaching for Sweete’s, hoping he would not become moist-eyed as he said his farewell.

“I’ll remember you, Shadrach Sweete,” he said as he dropped the big man’s hand and started off toward his company, who were hollering for him to join their ranks. “You come to Missouri soon and look me up—you know where.”

He smiled at the old trapper, waving as the dusty column was ordered to face about and into a march, pushing off the parade and past Fort Laramie’s stone guardhouse, heading down the North Platte for the east and home.

“I’ll find you, Jonah Hook. By glory, I’ll find you.”

Hook was damned well relieved that the sun had made a glorious rising this crisp fall morning. Its brightness meant he and the rest had to squint as they marched into that brilliant sunflower yellow orb. Because now no one would see the moistness come to his eyes as he shuffled along in cracked ankle-boots he hoped would last him long enough to make it home to Gritta and the children.

Crying was all right. But it sure as hell wasn’t any other man’s business.

Jonah glanced around him, on both sides of the column of fours, cavalry escort up ahead, wagons loaded with provision for the homeward-bound march at the tail end of the line.

As much as he had tried to deny it the last few weeks, there was something about this place that he was going to miss—although he had admitted it to no man.

At first Hook figured such thoughts rumbled around inside him merely because this was such new country to his eyes and ears and tastebuds. And for the longest time he had figured that newness would wear off. But with the rounding of every new green hill or ocher ridge or yellow-tinged bluff, the scenery never went stale to the eyes. With each new mouthful of buffalo or elk, mule deer or antelope, the tumbling, endless plains of the West became something to be savored with all his senses. With every new scent and sound, or shape to the clouds in the incredibly immense sky that always hung just beyond arm’s length overhead, Jonah had slowly come to accept that his affection for this place was not merely because of its newness only.

Yet lingering still was the doubt that he would ever return to this wild, untamed land where there was no law, and certainly no church for his Gritta and the young’uns. The ache for home and family was far too strong.

It lay heavy on his heart as he moved east across the plains—this doubt he carried with him that he would ever again lay eyes on Shad Sweete’s face in this lifetime.

Yet that medicine wheel lay in the palm of his hand for the rest of that day’s long march. And the next day’s. And the next …

Boothog’s father and uncle had both known Jubilee Usher’s father, one of the original twelve apostles who came to believe in prophet Joseph Smith and his gold tablets dictating the formation of a new church, under a new people: the Latter-day Saints.

So it had been the natural, expected thing to do out in that western kingdom of Deseret to join Brigham Young’s special, handpicked military arm. With his Avenging Angels, the Mormon Prophet smote those who threatened the sanctity of the State of Deseret. Citing ancient precedent, Young empowered his hundred handpicked Danites, these Avenging Angels, to right all wrongs done the Saints, or the Mormon state.

They were vigilantes, self-empowered men who saw things through their own self-righteousness. Justice in this broad, big western land skewed to their side of the pew.

Year after year, young Lemuel Wiser had come to know the tall, imposing figure of Jubilee Usher, who was rapidly rising in influence among the more militant and self-protective of the Saints. As Wiser grew to manhood, he found the immense tower of a man all the more a capable leader of men, able to inspire and motivate, cajole when needed, threaten when necessary—but always able to get his men to do exactly what he wanted, if not exactly what Brigham Young himself desired as well.