Cry of the Hawk

Kentucky-born Major Wycliffe Cooper had served the Union with honor during the recent rebellion before his manic depression began to take its toll on his career. For months he had attempted control over his life by drinking himself into oblivion. Teetotaler Custer had eventually confiscated Cooper’s supply of whiskey and ordered the major to straighten himself out or suffer court-martial.

“So Cooper put a bullet through his brain instead?”

“They’re burying him tomorrow,” Sweete replied. “Quiet as possible. Custer won’t give him military honors. Says suicide is a coward’s way out.”

Hook glared at the old trapper. “You never thought about it?”

“What, Jonah?”

He stopped whittling on the stick with his folding knife. “Giving up. Just putting a end to it.”

“You ain’t thinking like that?”

He tossed the peeled twig into the dust of Fort McPherson’s parade as the late afternoon shadows lengthened. “Man loses just about all he cares for in life—natural for him to figure there ain’t nothing for him to go on living for.”

“You ain’t lost them, Jonah.” Sweete inched closer, talking softer. “They’re out there. Long as you got hope in your heart of finding ’em—they’re out there.”

He squinted into the far distance darkly veined with shallow, tree-lined rivers, studded and dippled with the flesh-colored, rolling, grass-covered hills.

“Why’s this damned ground so all-fired important that these Injuns ready to kill to keep it? This army of Custer’s ready to kill to tear it from ’em? Where’d it ever say that a chunk of ground got that important—and a numan life was something you just stomped into the dust under your heel?”

“Lots of folks is coming west—”

“Damn them, Shad!” he snapped. “Don’t you think I hate that about people? I was off fighting for someone else’s goddamned land when I was captured by the Yankees. I was out in Sioux hell on the North Platte or the Sweetwater or the Powder River or the Tongue, fighting Injuns for a piece of ground when that bunch come in and took my family from me, dammit! What made ground more important than people anyway, old man? Tell me that!”

Sweete was a long time before answering. “Never owned me a piece of land, Jonah. What I tried out to Oregon, I never bought, never filed on. Didn’t set right with me, son. So take your spurs off when you’re fixing to ride me.”

“By God, it’s you out here leading me on this little journey of yours.”

“This ain’t got nothing to do with land!” Sweete snapped back. “I got me a family. Same as you. Doing the best I can for ’em. You ain’t the only man ever lost loved ones.”

Hook studied the old trapper a moment, finding Sweete would not hold his eyes. “You understand, don’t you? I mean—you’re really trying to understand.”

Sweete shook his head, a sad grin growing there in the midst of his shaggy beard. “You can be a bit slow of times, Jonah Hook. Of course I been trying to understand about how it must be for a man to have his kin took from him—”

“No,” Jonah interrupted. “This is something different. You lost family, Shad.”

“It don’t matter now.”

“Tell me. It makes a difference to me.”

“Sometime, Jonah. Sometime I will tell you.”

Major Wycliffe Cooper was laid to rest at Fort McPherson on the eleventh, the same day General Philip H. Sheridan arrived.

Custer was able to report on his meeting with Pawnee Killer, whose village was camped a few miles from the fort, when the department commander arrived.

“While they protested most strongly in favor of maintaining peaceful relations with the white man,” Custer explained, “the actions of their chiefs only served to confirm for me that they had arranged their parley with me for one purpose: to spy on my intentions and strength.”

“You’re learning that the word of an Indian is like shoveling fleas in a barnyard, Armstrong,” Sheridan replied. “Their promises aren’t worth the time it took to speak them.”

“None of us like being played the fool, General.”

“Indian promises are like horse apples. There’s more than you know what to do with—and they aren’t worth a damn. I’ll tell you, Armstrong—these bands need to be taught a severe lesson and soon.”

Custer scowled. “Just what kind of lesson do you and General Sherman have in mind, sir?”

“Something that will last, Custer,” said the short Irishman. “This is your job, I’ll remind you. After all is said and done—you’re a soldier. This is the inevitable clashing of the races: what must occur when a stronger, more advanced race pushes aside the weaker.”

“I take it I’m to serve as the point man for that assault on a primitive culture, General?”

Sheridan smiled within his dark, well-trimmed beard. “Nothing so fancy as that. By god, Custer—I want you to sweep this country between the Platte and Republican—sweep it clean of hostiles and show the rest of the tribes how we’ll deal with them if they attempt trouble.”

He saluted smartly. “With your permission, General, I’ll pass the word to my officers that we’re back in the saddle at six tomorrow morning.”