Cry of the Hawk

Sullivan was whimpering, occasionally cursing, then begging again for mercy. Just to be left alone.

“I can’t leave you be,” Wiser explained. “You will serve far greater purpose in this moment of pain than the worth of your whole miserable life.” With a balled fist, he smacked the bullet hole, causing Sullivan to arch his back, and thrash the leg in agony.

“Exquisite pain, isn’t it? A lesson, this is—that all pain is itself a lesson, Mr. Sullivan.”

Wiser pricked open the bullet hole in the man’s britches, slashing up and down the trouser leg. Then with the tip of his knife, Wiser began slowly to burrow the knife into the bullet hole itself while Sullivan screeched inhumanly.

He dragged the knife blade from the bullet hole, which now pumped more vigorously.

“The Indians will cut off a man’s balls too, Mr. Sullivan.” He cut at the man’s belt, slashed off the buttons at the fly and yanked up the penis and scrotum, hearing an audible gasp from the rest of the onlookers, wide-eyed and ashen all.

“Are you man enough to live the rest of your life without your manhood, Mr. Sullivan?”

The victim writhed, mumbling incoherently, tears mingling with the blood and dirt smeared on his face.

“I didn’t think so, Mr. Sullivan. You may talk a good game—but you aren’t really as brave as you would make out to be, are you?”

With a quicksilver movement, Wiser dragged the knife blade across Sullivan’s windpipe, watching his victim’s eyes widen as Sullivan began to gurgle and froth.

“That sound is your last breath of air before you die, Mr. Sullivan. I don’t think you worthy enough to live—hardly worthy enough to ride with Jubilee Usher and his chosen Angels. So I’m not going to cut your balls off until you’re dead. Then I’m going to feed them to Colonel Usher’s hounds. And leave you right here for the crows who roost in these trees.”

Wiser wiped the knife blade off on Sullivan’s trousers as the thrashing slowly ceased. Then the victim lay still, silent.

He stuffed the knife back in its scabbard and turned to the group. “Is my tent ready? I so feel like making sport with that nigger squaw now.”

17

Late Summer, 1866

“WHAT YOU FIGURE on us doing now?” Artus Moser asked his cousin.

Jonah Hook’s lips were drawn across his sharply chiseled face in a thin line he dared not break just yet.

Moser swiped a damp bandanna down his face in what had become an automatic gesture here in late July on the southern plains, deep in the eastern part of Indian Territory, also known as the Nations. They stood on the crude covered porch of a trader’s house, one of those who by government license could legally trade with both the civilized and warrior bands assigned reservations here. While he had been glad to see white faces and hear English, the trader to the Creek tribe had nonetheless been less than forthcoming with information.

Here among the gentle timbered hills that formed the Kiamichi Mountains, Moser and Hook had wandered for days, asking their questions, growing more and more frustrated that so few understood their words, even less understood their attempts at crude sign language—anything to make the Creeks understand they were looking for a large band of white horsemen who were carrying along with them a light-haired white woman and three children.

“We can’t stay here, Jonah.”

“What you want from me?” Hook snapped, his cheeks red with more than the sticky heat. Even the leaves of the hardwood trees seemed to seep a damp, oppressive warmth into the heavy air.

“I come here with you—to help you find Gritta, dammit.” Moser kept his voice low as he glanced back through the open doorway, his eyes finding the trader behind his long counter, stirring a breeze before his face with one of those paper fans.

“C’mon—we gotta get away from here.” Hook stepped off the low porch, heading out.

“Where, Jonah? Back home?”

Hook whirled. “We ain’t got no home back there now. Not you. Not me.”

Moser turned as he heard the scrape of the old trader’s stool on the wood floor. The man was coming out of the steamy darkness of his store, then stopped and leaned against the doorjamb, as if he would go no farther into the heat.

“Didn’t realize you boys was on foot. Come all the way down from Missouri, walking, did you?”

“Most of us walked home from the war—lot farther’n that,” Moser replied. He watched the droplet of sweat creep down the old man’s bulbous nose, wondering when it would fall. Instead, it seemed to cling tenaciously there, pendant like a clear jewel the old man wore.

“Man who walks on foot, and goes off searching for someone who rides a horse, can’t really expect to get anywhere.”

Hook came to the step but did not mount to the porch. “Don’t you think we thought of that? They may be ahead of us—way ahead of us … but that don’t mean I gotta give up just ’cause they’re moving faster’n us.”