Cry of the Hawk

She was gone what seemed like an eternity for him, Moser forced to sit there, watching his own breath curl up before his eyes—having to concentrate so that he would not stare at Jonah’s face barely visible for the blankets they had piled cocoonlike about him as the wounded man shivered from an internal fire.

Artus dared not think about losing Jonah. That scared him more than losing his daddy right after the war. With the squaw gone off and Jonah delirious with fever, for the first time Artus felt the pinch of loneliness and wondered if he would make it out alive. Afraid of dying.

It was then that he remembered scraps and fragments of the war—unwillingly. But the memories gave him some solace, remembering how he had felt best when they were about to go into battle, close enough to the Yankees to hear the big cannon softening things up, maybe even close enough to see the Yankee battle-flags snapping far across some grassy field, through the leafy trees, maybe up some bare slope to the hilltop they would soon have to charge, racing into the face of grapeshot and canister and wheezing death cries from the long lines of bloodied men falling on either side of Artus, crying out and falling …

But the hardest times for Moser had been the waiting, and the marching to wait some more as the generals moved their regiments about, intent on probing for an offensive or intent on escaping to fight another day. That’s when he had time to remember, like now. Time to remember and reflect and dwell on all that he had lived through.

Artus had learned never to grow too close to his fellow soldiers in that regiment and company and squad and mess. Never—because chances were they would be ripped from him by some bloody hand cutting a swath of gore and mangled flesh through what friendship had been kindled. Best not know their names.

Now his cousin lay dying on the floor of this tiny line shack beside a graded roadbed where the iron rails were to cross the creek come spring.

Spring.

But the woman returned, clutching the four corners of the one thin blanket she had taken along when she had left hours ago making Moser feel she was abandoning him at last.

“That’s right!” he had yelled at her. “Damn squaw—who needs you anyway! You belong out here … so run off if you’ve a mind to!”

So now he felt bad about screaming at her from that narrow doorway, his words flung at her back, into the snowless wind that raised swirls of old, icy snow at her feet as she plodded into the gray world away from the creek, where there was hope of finding firewood.

But she was back, dropping her blanket bundle beside the tiny one-foot-square sheet-iron stove in the corner. It was the only thing warm enough in the shack to touch, though this morning they had run out of Moser’s squaw wood. There remained but a few coals. He could see their brave, red struggle as she drew back the grate door with her knife handle.

“What’s that?” he asked as she crumbled something from her blanket into the stove. Then he realized.

“That’s a damned cow pie!” Moser exclaimed, wonder crossing his face, sensing some instant confusion—not certain if he should feel relief just yet.

“Buff …” She tried the word after a moment when the first crumbled chip smoldered and took to the heat of the coals. “Buff …”

“Buffalo?”

She nodded. Then crumbled more of the chip, using the tiny pieces as kindling in rebuilding the fire.

“Buffalo pie,” he said to himself, taking his hands from the blanket and holding them near the front of that tiny stove. “By God—you might have saved you and me doing this, woman.”

But of a sudden he felt guilty for saying that, his eyes drawn magnetically to the pale-skinned, mumbling cousin of his. Artus struggled, but with the woman’s help he moved Hook closer to the stove. As she fed the stove from her cache of prairie fodder, Moser watched for some sign of improvement in Jonah. It never came as another twilight brought a brief period of setting, yellow light sprayed on the snow while the sun dipped out of the low-hung clouds on its path beyond the far mountains.

“We gotta do something,” he whispered to her as the light seeped out of the sky. Soon only the glow from their fragrant warm stove illuminated this tiny spot in the middle of their world here beneath the dark nothingness of the overturned crock bowl.

As if she understood, the woman nodded, her plain face filled with resignation. “We go.”

He felt instantly buoyed by her willingness to try, as if she perhaps knew all the better how to get out of the hole he had dug them into. After he and Jonah had found this place miles and miles west of Abilene and Jonah said he could ride no more with his shoulder killing him the way it was and they had to stop and get a few hours rest before pushing on.

But they had never pushed on, and Moser felt he was to blame. As Jonah sank deeper and deeper into his fitful fevers, Artus fell into a darker and darker despair, desperate of ever coming out of this shack and this strange land alive.