Cry of the Hawk

“Don’t remember you neither. So what does that prove to us? That I kept to myself? Damn right I did. Now, you want someone to hunt buffalo for this railroad or not?”

The man smiled at last. “So you’re good with that old front-stuffer, are you?”

“Jim Bridger himself always asked me how good a man got to be to kill something big as a buffalo.”

“You knew Bridger?”

“Him and his partner, Shadrach Sweete. They scouted for Connor last summer. So how come you’re here working for the railroad? Got tired of puny wages and moldy hardtack?”

With a sudden gush, the big man laughed. “You’ll do.” He pushed the pencil toward Hook, his other hand indicating the line. “Need your name, and your skinner’s name there.”

Jonah carefully made his letters, the only thing in the world he could write, or recognize. In handing the pencil over to Moser, Hook asked, “What we get in the way of fixin’s?”

“The railroad will assign you a wagon and team. You lose ’em—you get docked on your pay. Three blankets a man and a poncho for each of you. Rope and come-a-long for pulling hides. You need mess gear—buy it yourself.”

“Don’t need none,” he answered as Moser straightened. “You said something about pay. How much?”

The man turned the ledger page around and squinted at the names. “Jonah Hook. And … Artus Moser. Together, you’ll earn two hundred dollars per month.”

They looked at one another in shock.

“I know, boys. It’s a shitload of money—if you got the makings of a buffalo hunter like you claim you do.”

Jonah felt numb inside, thinking about just how much two hundred dollars was in real money. “I am. A hunter.”

“K-P expects you to bring in the meat off ten buff a day. You get a bonus at the end of the month if you bring in more than three hundred for that month.”

“And a bonus too?” Moser asked, his voice a bit on the squeaky side.

The big man looked at Artus. “That’s right. But I personally think you got the worst of it. Him—he’s got the easy job: just shooting the buff. When he gets ten of the big brutes down, all the fun’s over and the work just starts. Ten buff a day will mean the two of you will be humping from first light to moonrise getting in and out of line camp with your meat.”

“Where’s camp?”

“Couple miles west of here now. The K-P been laying track since the first days after the war ended. The line camp moves west about once a week.”

“Soon enough, I s’pose—camp will be so far away there won’t be no more whiskey and women, Artus,” Jonah said with a wry grin.

“Don’t you count on that, mister,” replied the sign-up man. “Watering holes and whores will damn well follow these gandy dancers right on into hell if that’s where the railroad goes to lay track. Because gandy dancers got lots of money and a few hours of nighttime on their hands.”

Jonah looked over the smoky room. “Ain’t that fitting? ’Cause that’s just the two things a whore and fancy card dealers like most about a man.”

The man handed Hook a slip of paper. “You boys take this out to camp west of town. Past McCoy’s corrals next to the tracks. You can’t miss the camp. Just follow the tracks.”

“Who we see there?”

“Ask for the camp foreman. He’ll get you fixed up with the rest of your truck and wagon.”

Hook stuck out his hand. “You know our names. I didn’t catch yours.”

“Billy Crowell. Good to have you boys signed on.”

Jonah waved the hire-on slip in the air. “Believe me, mister—it’s damn good to have a job like this!”

Those shaggy beasts could weigh as much as a ton, and some stood over six feet tall at the hump.

From far away, they looked like a black brown growth on the prairie. Up this close, as Jonah belly-crawled to the crest of a low rise beside Artus Moser, the buffalo looked all the bigger than he could remember. Then he recalled he had never been this near a buffalo, much less a whole herd.

“Maybe it’s just the size of the head on the critter,” Jonah whispered to his cousin, who was dragging the extra pouch containing an additional powder horn and cast balls.

They had spent the better part of the previous afternoon heating bar lead and pouring it into hand-held ball molds. Each of the .62-caliber balls weighed a lot in Jonah’s pouch, along with powder horn and caps. And Artus was dragging another shoulder pouch full of them up the slope on his belly beside Jonah.

Once the pair had picked a place to begin, and if they were careful, the camp foreman instructed them yesterday, the Southern boys would be able to stay right where they were until they dropped ten buffalo. If they weren’t careful and failed to read the wind, the rest of the herd would likely spook and take off.

“If that happens,” the foreman had explained with that aggravating smile, “then you two have to hightail it back to your wagon and trail that herd until they decide to stop and graze. Ten buffalo a day. You bring in more—there’s a bonus for you come the end of the month.”

“Crowell told us,” Hook had said, with his own wolfish grin.

“What … what happens—we don’t bring in ten?” Moser asked suspiciously.