Cry of the Hawk

She’s gone to live with the Mosers, he told himself. I been so long getting back—what with her having to care for the children alone, the work and all. Maybe, goddammit, she give up on me ever coming back and went back to her family in Virginia.

The fear struck him more cold than any wind-driven sleet could at that moment.

He was cursing his luck, the Union, and the frontier army that had galvanized him out of Rock Island Prison and sent him off to the plains to fight Injuns—

But then his feet stopped him again, staring at the two windows he had been able to afford putting into the front of the cabin. What with the high price of glazing, he and Gritta bought only two when they raised the cabin from the valley floor. Both were broken, on either side of the dark, gaping rectangle where the door had once held out the cold Missouri winter.

From both holes fluttered the curtains Gritta had made years ago, looking now like the petticoats kicked up and swirled around pairs of plump knees on those chippies who worked the soldiers for all they were worth, night after night in those watering holes and brothels down in Dobe Town just outside Fort Kearney in Nebraska Territory.

That’s when he saw the carcass in the yard, not yet gone completely to bone. Decomposed by time and merely tormented by robber jays and crows content to sup on carrion. Not one of his stock—a small animal. Standing over it, he recognized the carcass as the dog who had followed him and Gritta from Virginia, tongue lolling as it loped alongside their cart, before darting into the dark forest, scenting a rabbit.

Kneeling slowly, he touched Seth’s skull, gently placing a fingertip into the big bullet hole.

Who’d want to kill an old, half-blind dog and leave him lying in the middle of the yard anyway?

But the tiny shred of gray denim still clinging between the skull’s canines made Jonah wince in imagined pain.

Seth had him a good hold of somebody when he was shot.

Jonah stood, sensing the cold now fully seeping into his marrow like no loneliness and despair ever had. Even sitting out day after day in Rock Island, waiting … waiting.

No one was going to tell him to move. No one ordering him now. He was a free man again, at last. So he had to order his own feet ahead of each other, one at a time—inching toward the barn. He had to know.

And then Jonah became suddenly conscious that he was not breathing.

The barn was empty. Even the pegs where he hung tack and bridle and hackamores. Just the moldy hay in the stalls gone too long without mucking. The wild stench of it—gone to rot now.

Jonah pushed himself hard toward the cabin, certain now he would not be surprised. Certain he wouldn’t find a body. They had gone. But that still did not explain the dog. And the denim of someone’s britches Seth had a death hold on when he was killed.

Hook stood at the door, listening to the rustle of the field mice as they suddenly recognized some sound other than their own and scurried off the table and out of the dry sink, off her sideboard Gritta had carried in the back of their little cart from the Shenandoah Valley. The cold had made him numb, and with a shudder he remembered now too what some of the Union guards at Rock Island had told him about how that Yankee general Phil Sheridan had made a wasteland of the Shenandoah in the final summer of the war.

About like this, he sobbed quietly.

Nothing, nobody to come home to after all that praying and counting and hoping that had kept him alive and putting one foot in front of each other, marching from Illinois to Kansas and on to the Dakota Territory where he had to fight Injuns just to keep his hair and stay alive so that he could get back home to Gritta and the children but no one was left anymore and he had counted so much on them being here he didn’t know what to do next but sit here in the broke-down chair where he collapsed beside the wobbly table, lay his head down on his forearm and cry.

The nature of the light slipping through the broken windows and door frame had changed subtly over the afternoon that he wept and dozed off into some unconscious state then awoke to sob some more, all without ever raising his head from his arm laid on the dusty tablecloth Gritta used to shake free of crumbs out the front door after every meal.

The same arm grazed by a Cheyenne bullet so long ago was numb now. His feet had gone so cold he could no longer recognize them as his own inside the soaked stockings and cracked, dry-split boots. He shivered, realizing the need for fire. If he was going to live, he’d have to stay warm tonight.

And just get through till tomorrow.

The wood box beside the stove was still filled. He pushed the trivet aside and grabbed a chunk of wood, from which he shaved some kindling. On the top of the stone mantle, he found the small wooden box that contained the fire-steel and char and flint and in minutes had a fire beginning to crackle as soon as the chimney heated enough to draw.