Cry of the Hawk

At first deserters were “skinned”—half their heads shaved by the regimental barber. When that did not prove enough of a deterrent, deserters were stripped to the waist and horsewhipped. Yet even then, each morning saw a few more failing to report at reveille. That’s when Custer ordered sentries thrown around the entire regimental bivouac, given instructions to shoot first and ask questions later if a soldier was found outside of camp.

But as hard as he was on his regiment, Custer also gave some relief to the sickening chow his men were forced to eat. He organized hunting parties to push into the surrounding country, killing deer, elk, antelope, and bison. Along with relieving the monotony of the moldy salt pork and weevil-infested hardtack, the hunting parties Custer ordered out gave the Seventh Cavalry a chance to fire their weapons from horseback, improve their aim, and become more familiar with the countryside so different from what most had grown up with back east.

Then on 18 May, Mrs. Elizabeth Custer herself had rolled into Fort Hays, been swept up into her husband’s arms, and spirited off to the privacy of his canvas-and-log shelter.

“Makes a man ache for his own family,” Sweete said quietly as he watched Jonah turn grimly away from the happy reunion.

“Makes a man wanna find those who stole my family.”

Hook shuffled off to find himself a piece of shade.

“When we’re ready—we’ll see what we can do to find hide or hair of that bunch took your kin,” Sweete said as he came to the younger man’s side.

“I’m ready now!” He stopped and wheeled on the mountain man. “We’ll get saddled and pull out right now.”

“Whoa, Jonah! Ain’t as easy as all that. We signed on—”

“You signed on to stay. As for me, I can be gone as easy as I signed my name. Had me enough, Shad. You coming with me?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. Not taking off like this neither. Time comes … we’ll track. Go clear back down into the Territories if’n we have to. Don’t you ever doubt we’ll come up with something.”

Jonah felt the gall rising to his throat. The sudden flare of anticipation and hope warming him once more, so long buried—and now so quickly doused with the cold water of Sweete’s reason.

“Damn you, Shad Sweete!” He captured a fistful of the old man’s greasy calico shirt. “I’ll do it alone, I have to.”

“You go now—hell, you go alone anytime—them roving bands of warriors make a prickly pear of you in no uncertain way.”

“I learned how to take care of myself,” he snapped, turning away.

Shad snagged him by the arm just as quickly. “You watch your temper—”

“Take your hand off my arm!” he snarled at the older man who towered over him.

“Watch your temper … and you’ll keep your hair, Jonah.”

“You saying you’re the one who’s gonna take my hair?”

Sweete released the sinew-tough, rail-thin arm. “No. I don’t figure that mangy scalp of your’n worth the trouble of cutting on, Jonah Hook. I’m just trying to make sense—”

“You coming?” He shook his arm, rubbing it where the big man had held him.

“No.”

“Then I’m going with Artus.” His lips formed a thin line of determination.

“He won’t go.”

Jonah stopped and turned on his heel slowly, hands balled on his hips. “How you so sure?”

“’Cause it’s plain to me that his side of the family got all the common sense.”

It flooded over Jonah, all the rage and disappointment tumbling together into one acid knot eating a hole in the soul of him, plain as the hot Kansas sun overhead.

“When?” Hook finally asked as the tears simmered in his eyes, tears he refused to release.

“When our job’s done with Custer. I gave my word when I signed on. That’s a bond. We’ll go only when the job’s done.”

28

June, 1867

SHAD SWEETE WAS every bit as anxious to get out of Fort Hays as was Jonah Hook or Artus Moser.

Trouble was, Custer wasn’t ready to march his ill-fed, poorly equipped command out from Fort Hays until the first of June.

And by that time, the roving bands of marauding warriors had moved north from the Smoky Hill, Saline, and Solomon rivers—north all the way to the Platte River country.

With Department Commander Philip H. Sheridan’s blessing, General Hancock was to have the Seventh Cavalry push north toward the Emigrant Road, that heavily used wagon route that brought settlers and miners west to Colorado or on to California. As well, the rails then being laid by the Union Pacific followed the same valley of the Platte. It was nothing short of vital that Custer’s cavalry march toward Fort McPherson on the Platte, and from there begin their sweep to clear the plains of hostiles between that river and the Republican.

Colonel Andrew Jackson Smith’s orders to Custer read: