Cry of the Hawk

The cold rains of late November were turning to sleet outside the series of limestone caves where Usher’s advance scouts under Captain Eloy Hastings had found them a place out of the weather three days before. In the back of this main cavern was a long, dark drop at the end of which a man could hear the faint splash of any rock he threw off the ledge to amuse himself. Without a lantern to guide him to the edge, he might fall into what hell no man knew waited at the bottom of that deep, black cavern.

Picketing the horses in a nearby grove and stowing their supplies in another cave, Usher’s men had settled in for what they knew would be days of restless inactivity, waiting out the passing of the first winter storm rumbling across southern Missouri.

It wasn’t their first winter in this country.

And they weren’t new at waiting either.

“Who’s next?” asked one of the Danites as he emerged from a side cavern, buttoning the fly to his britches, yanking on his belt.

A man quickly stood, jostling the crate they were using as a card table these days of waiting. “Me. I want a poke.”

Just after leading Jubilee Usher’s band to this series of caves, Hastings’s scouts had been ordered back out into what was then a drizzling rain to ride farther south and see what they could rustle up in the way of women on the nearby farms.

“The men will need a little something besides cards to keep them happy,” Usher had reminded Wiser and Captain Hastings.

“Nigger or white, makes no difference to my loins right now,” Boothog had replied, that devilish grin crossing his handsome face.

So it was the scouts had found a black slave girl no more than sixteen and hurrying toward a Creek Indian farm located close by when the horsemen had surrounded her. From the moment she had been dropped from the horse at the entrance to the cave three days ago, the unkempt sprigs of her black hair dripping with diamonds of sleeting rain, the girl had had little rest.

Boothog had ordered her carried to an adjoining cave, where under lamplight a few of the soldiers stripped her, staked her out, and proceeded to rotate themselves on her body—Wiser claiming first go at their skinny captive. At first she had screamed and thrashed about, until gagged. No man among Boothog’s army minded the nigger girl thrashing in the least. It only added to a man’s fun, and enjoyment.

Wiser looked up from his cards and glanced over his shoulder as the man disappeared into the chamber where the captive lay.

As his eyes came back to the crate table, Boothog thought he caught a flicker of movement from the hands of another player.

He smiled grimly. “Lay your cards down, Billy.”

The man’s eyes grew wide as the rest of the players eased back from the oblong rifle crate.

“I didn’t do nothing wrong, Boothog. Major Wiser, sir.”

“Put the goddamned cards down.”

“Yessir.” He laid them down in a neat stack.

“Count them for us, Billy Baker,” Wiser demanded as he slowly pulled the pistol from his waistband.

The rest of the card players arose suddenly and backed away as the solitary man left at the crate chewed on the end of a finger. With his thumb, Boothog drew back the pistol’s hammer.

“I said—count your cards.”

“Just playing a little poker with you, Major. I fold. See? I fold. Hand’s all done.”

Baker started to shove his cards under some others when Boothog slammed his hand down onto the man’s wrist. With the pistol shoved under the soft underside of Baker’s chin, Wiser slowly spread the cards.

“One … two … three … four—and five.”

“See, Major? Just like I—”

“What’s this, Billy? Why, it’s a sixth pasteboard,” Wiser declared sinisterly as he slowly pulled free the extra card.

Things became a blur in that next heartbeat as Baker attempted to bat the pistol barrel aside and the hammer fell, sending a bullet into the card player’s mouth, crashing on through the brain, and splintering out the top of his head with a wet, slimy explosion of blood and gore.

The body fell backward from the crate of hardtack, trembling in death throes.

Boothog rose after glancing at the rest, their eyes wide and hollow with shock. He walked over, held the muzzle of his pistol inches from the victim’s heart and pulled the trigger a second time. Baker’s shirt grew damp and shiny. Wiser knelt and picked through the dead man’s pockets, pulling out what little money there was.

“Bring me his bedroll,” Wiser commanded. “I get first call on the bastard’s things.”

“Get the body out of here,” Usher’s voice boomed from the roof of the cavern. “It’s beginning to smell a bit in here already.”

Wiser turned, smiling. “It is, isn’t it, Colonel?”

“Men die a violent death like that—they’re apt to fill their britches with shit,” Jubilee replied. “Dispose of the body now, Major.”

Wiser turned to the other players. “You heard the colonel. Take Baker’s body back to the far end of the cave and throw him down.”

One of the players who had hold of Baker’s leg snarled at the others. “I got call on his boots, I do.”