Cry of the Hawk

They had come here counting on the both of them getting hired on to scout for the forthcoming campaign. When the chief of scouts and the officers here gathered learned of Hook’s months of experience along the Emigrant Road and with General Connor’s Powder River Expedition as a U.S. Volunteer, not to mention the fact that he had been employed last fall as a buffalo hunter for the Kansas Pacific Railroad, the army promptly snatched up this tall, gangly Southerner the way summer rain fell in this part of the plains: fast and furious.

Hiring Moser as a scout was a different matter altogether.

“Why can’t you use him?” Hook asked of the long-bearded, middle-aged frontiersman who sat quietly chewing on the stump of a much-battered briar pipe.

“I’ve tried to explain that to you,” interrupted the double-barred officer.

“What if he rides along with me—at no pay?”

The officer slammed an open fist down on the table. “I’ve told you, mister. Now—if you keep at this, you’ll likely find yourself without a job as a scout.”

“I doubt that, Lieutenant,” said the frontiersman, speaking for the first time, and getting a stony glare from the officer for his trouble.

The soldier grimaced and said, “I’ve been given the task of helping you by General Custer himself—”

“And a fine job you’re doing too. But I’ve been hired by the general as chief of scouts, and I’ll hire and fire my own scouts, thank you.” He turned back to Hook. “Besides, any man who went along on that Powder River campaign had to know Gabe Bridger and Shad Sweete.”

Hook smiled, relief washing over him suddenly. “Damn right I knowed both—and those two taught me some on that expedition.”

“That’s why I hired you, Hook. You got the makings. It’s just that your cousin here don’t know a Sioux or Cheyenne from squat.”

“He fought in the war.”

“That was a white man’s war.” The frontiersman tried to make it come out gently, packing his smoldering pipe with a fingertip.

“If he don’t get to come with me—I s’pose I gotta move along.”

“Just as well,” growled the officer, dipping his pen into the inkwell and preparing to scratch the name from the rolls.

The frontiersman clamped a hand around the soldier’s wrist. “You’re fixing to walk out on a good job if this bunch don’t hire on your cousin?”

“I am. Always enough for a man to do out here. I wasn’t looking for my last job when it found me. I s’pose I can always find something to eat and a place to sleep while I’m waiting for something else to come along.”

“Good,” the frontiersman said. “Both of you’ll do.”

Jonah Hook was drawn up short by that. “You mean Artus can come along as a scout?”

“No, I didn’t say that. But I know the wagon master, named Grigsby, is looking for teamsters and herders for the remuda we’ll be wrangling along with the wagon train. If Moser here can handle a wagon or horses—he has him the chance to work with Grigsby.”

“Where we find this wagon master?”

He jabbed the air with the stem of his pipe. “Off yonder.”

Hook glanced in that direction, toward the trees that lined the nearby Smoky Hill River. Then he held out his hand to the chief of scouts. “Thank you, mister. Didn’t catch your name.”

“Joe Milner.”

“You’re the one they call California Joe?”

He beamed. “That’s right.”

“Shad Sweete told me some about you! Knew you up to Oregon country before he give it up and come back to the mountains.”

Milner was smiling broadly, his stained teeth dull against his dusty beard. “After me and Shad helped Ol’ Zach settle them Mexicans down, I got me a pretty wife out to the California diggings before moseying up to Oregon country to try my hand at settling down. Nancy Emma is her name—and she give me a passel of young’uns before I decided I had to come back to these parts just like Shad done. Something about all this open country.”

“Ain’t it true,” Hook replied.

“I’d like to palaver later with you boys,” Joe said as he rocked back in the chair again, stuffing the pipe stem between lips all but hidden beneath by his overgrown mustache. “Catch up on what ol’ Sweete is up to. You both come round.”

“I’ll look to do that before evening.”

They had made it through the worst of the winter. That was enough for any man to take some pride in. Those two weeks lost to him with the bullet-fever in that line shack, then the long time mending with regimental surgeon Porter at the Fort Hays infirmary, and finally the last two months spent getting through the waning days of winter in that dugout they had made for themselves against the side of a hill overlooking Big Creek, not many miles from Fort Hays itself. There had been some small measure of security felt by both Hook and Moser in staying those last violent months of winter near the frontier fort. At times the pair had run across small patrols of cavalry riding this way or that on one errand or another—always seen in the distance, loping along in their column of twos, rarely with a guidon or flag fluttering above their determined purpose.