Cry of the Hawk

“Like I’ve said before—there’s a good chance we’ll be wanting to lay rail by the middle of March. Mayhaps the end of March. You men need work then, come round. We’ll start putting down track right out yonder, where the last tie section finished work yesterday.”

“March. Maybe middle of March,” was the whisper coming back down the line among these comrades in arms sharing that vital secret with one another.

But until then, they would be on their own once more, each man taking his money and parting from this place.

“What-cher name?”

“Jonah Hook,” he answered, watching his clerk beginning to scan the ledger as Moser stepped up behind Jonah and the next man in line shifted to another clerk down the table.

“You two together, is it?” the man asked, eyeing Moser.

Artus nodded.

The fleshy man went back to his ledger, then looked up, squinting. “Don’t find your name here. You a recent hire for that tie gang?”

“I didn’t lay track. Hunted meat.”

He pursed his full, fleshy lips in a mean fashion that reminded him of a schoolteacher he’d suffered back in the Shenandoah. She was the reason he had never gone beyond the fourth grade.

“Why didn’t you say so to begin with, Hook?”

He didn’t figure it was a question needing an answer as the clerk dragged up another, smaller ledger, opened it, and scanned down the page with an accusingly slow index finger. “Here you are. ‘Hunter.’” He looked up at Hook. “You been here awhile. Shows here you’ve turned in your wagon and team and squared accounts as of yesterday.”

“That mean I owe anything?” he asked, suddenly worried.

“No, Mr. Hook. But you’ve made yourself some money I see.”

“Three months’ worth coming to me.”

“Good wages they are too.” He pointed at Artus. “After he takes his fifty dollars per month off the top.”

“All right by me.” Jonah watched the man behind the table reach down into an iron-banded box stationed beside his chair. Behind each payroll clerk stood a pair of armed men, short-barreled scatterguns cradled in the crook of each elbow. Their eyes were constantly on the move—from the laborers standing at the tent flaps with craning necks, to the clerks who dipped in and out of the boxes filled with neat stacks of colored scrip.

The man licked a finger and counted through the sheets of scrip. Then satisfied, he held a stack in the air for Artus, counted out another bundle he presented to Jonah. “You fellas ever seen Union money?”

“Never. Not till now anyway.” He stared down at all the money he held in his hand. “How much is here?”

“I have paid Mr. Moser one hundred fifty dollars of your seven hundred eighty-eight.”

“That leaves me how much?”

The clerk smiled benignly. “Six hundred thirty-eight. You both made a few bonuses during your stay. Now please move along, fellas.”

They did, staring dumbly at what they held in their hands as they exited between a pair of armed railroad guards and out to the cold of that winter’s day.

“I was hoping for a bonus myself,” Moser grumped, staring at the difference between his bills and Jonah’s.

“You’d complain if’n I was to slit your throat with a new knife.” He slapped his cousin on the back. “Any this bonus money is ours together. You got your pay ’cause you did all the hard work.”

“You was always there, helping me skin, Jonah.”

“Like I told you—we hired on together.”

“And we’re looking for family together.” Moser stopped, getting Jonah to slow up and turn around. “So what we do now?”

Hook shrugged. “I figure we could do with some whiskey to wash down the memory of all this buffalo stink we got on us. Get me a new pair of boots and two new rifles for us.”

“A rifle—for me?”

“You best figure on using some of that money to outfit yourself for the road, Artus.”

Moser wagged his head, smiling broadly. “Damn, won’t that be something. Us having new boots and maybe a new shirt to go along with ’em—and a brand new shiny rifle too.”

“We got to get our outfits before we go drinking up everything we earned.”

“How ’bout some poker, Jonah?”

“Does figure that we’re due some fun, Artus. Let’s get into town and see what they got for us in the way of trail fixin’s.”

They saddled their Creek horses down in the tent shantytown and mounted. Jonah cradled the old muzzle loader across his lap as they pointed their noses east, a stiff, chill wind at their back, troubling the long, brown hair that now brushed Hook’s shoulders. Icy flakes hammered them in a growing swirl of white against the monotonous brown gray world as they pushed back toward Abilene.

Hard for a man to really tell, with as thick as the clouds hung overhead, but it was midafternoon by the time they reached the new town. Within another hour, they were stepping from a mercantile, wearing unfamiliar new boots, new canvas britches, and calico shirts. With new, stiff pinch hats on their heads and new Spencer rifles cradled protectively in their arms. Hook and Moser tied their old clothes in saddlepacks at the edge of the wide street.

“What now, Jonah?” Moser sighed.

“Don’t think I ever seen you smile so big, cousin.”