“Only twenty’s what he said,” Hook replied. “But I don’t have that much. It’s for damn sure I ain’t asking for your money, Riley.”
“I’m paying. And I’m riding too—like I said from the start. Two tickets to St. Louis is forty dollars, and I’ve got enough for both.” He patted his belly, beneath his shirt where he had belted a leather wallet. “I figure to have a lot left over from what I eased away from Jubilee Usher when I ran out on him.”
“More’n enough to get you to St. Louis?”
“That, and enough to get Hattie enrolled in a good seminary.”
“Seminary?”
“A girl’s boarding school.” Fordham looked down at the young woman. “If that’s all right with you and your daddy.”
She beamed, went to embrace her father. “May I, Pappy?”
“I only just got you back, Hattie.” Clutching her to him, Hook finally smiled, crinkling the flesh on his homely, bony face. Moisture welled in the eyes that finally looked up at Fordham. “Whyn’t you go on now, Riley—and buy them two tickets to St. Louis. This young lady’s gonna need a proper escort she goes riding the rails east to boarding school.”
With the whistle growing more and more faint, he and Shad Sweete had reined up atop the first row of low hills shouldered along the timbered river course, turning in their saddles to gaze back at those last few cars of the eastbound disappearing into the shimmering summer haze of that late afternoon.
“She’s gonna be fine, Jonah,” Sweete had told him.
“I know she is.”
“Time we get to Laramie, chances are Riley’s wire be waiting for you already.”
“It’s something I need to know. Where she is. Who she’s with. For so long—”
“Any man can understand that. Especially Riley Fordham. He’ll wire you where she is. The school matron’s name.”
Shad swiped at troubling, buzzing, green-backed flies tormenting the men and horses in the afternoon heat.
Still Jonah had sat, watching until the last smudges of billowing wood smoke was all that remained on the far horizon. “She wants me bring her mother home,” he had said ….
Here at Fort Laramie now Sweete lumbered up beside the younger man as the cool breezes worked their way off the Medicine Bow Mountains to the west. Down the valley of the LaRamee River, through the smoked-hide lodges clustered in a small circle where the old mountain man and wife and daughter camped among the others in the shadow of the white soldiers’ fort.
Hook tugged the diamond hitch on the pack animal before Sweete spoke.
“I want you know I was disappointed as you, Jonah—finding Usher’s bunch already pushed through here before we got back.”
“I’ll find him,” Jonah replied. “I know who. And I know where now. I’ll get Gritta back home with Hattie. Like I promised the girl.”
Shad motioned the women on over, Toote and Pipe Woman, when they emerged quietly from the lodge into the new light of day. “Any use me asking to go ’long with you, son?”
He turned to the old mountain man. “I s’pose there’s still a lot for me to learn, Shad. But not this trip. The track is plain enough to read—and we both know they’re headed back to that Salt Lake country. It’s just a matter of time now.”
“Man always needs someone watching out for his backside, Jonah.”
He dropped the stirrup leather and strode over to the older man. “If ever I feel the need of that—I know one man I can trust to do it. You pulled my fat out of the fire a time or two.”
“You’re still a young hoss, too. Lots of time for us.”
Toote hugged Jonah just as she had when he had pulled away on that trail east. But now, to everyone’s surprise but her own, the young woman came forward into the arms Toote backed away from.
“Come back, Jonah Hook,” Pipe Woman said quietly in her rough-edged English. She had clearly practiced for this leave-taking.
He gazed down into her pretty face, noticing the dark, cherry eyes misting over. He suddenly sensed the hurt of tearing away, like flesh from flesh.
“I got to find her.” He looked at Shad for help. “Dead or alive. I got to—”
Sweete put his big hands on his daughter’s shoulders and gently pulled her back from Hook. “We know. I’ll make her understand why you’re going, Jonah.”
“You do, don’t you?”
Sweete nodded. “Come gimme a hug, son. And tell me you’ll be back. Tell Pipe Woman too. That you’ll be back. One day.”
He looked at her, snagged her arms again, and crunched her with all he had to give at that moment, feeling a little less hollow for human closeness. He brushed her cheek with his lips, knowing if he did anything more, he would be sorry for it. Like he was doing Gritta wrong because he would likely find himself staying when he had to be pushing on after Jubilee Usher and the Danites. There was a woman and two boys out there.
Releasing Pipe Woman, Jonah quickly hurried into the big man’s arms and turned away before he betrayed himself.
“You know her heart is riding off with you, Jonah. Take care that you do come back to us.”
Atop the young mare, yanking on the halter to the pack animal, then reining away, Jonah swallowed down the emptiness and hurt. He rode away, hard and fast. Not knowing for sure what else to do now with the hollow pain.
Knowing only that he could not stay while there was still blood and kin and half of him still out there among the deserts and mountains.
Still out there … somewhere.
Epilogue
THE YOUNG NEWSPAPERMAN lay stretched on the freshly filled straw tick below the front window, where the night was beginning to cool at last.
In the back room, he heard the soft murmur of the old man’s voice. A cooing really, to Nate Deidecker’s ear anyway. That’s how Jonah Hook half sang, half whispered his wife to sleep as night had eased down on this high land in the shadow of Cloud Peak.
Whereas of a time long ago gone the couple had lain together in the shadow of Big Cobbler Mountain in the Shenandoah—seasons before a long, long trail had brought Jonah and his wife here to the edge of the high plains, their backs against the Big Horns.
Deidecker’s eyes burned beneath the poor light of the smoky oil lamp. Nate set his pencil upon the pad that lay beside the tick, reached over, and rolled the wick down, snuffing the lamp and plunging the room into momentary darkness—dark only for the time it took his eyes to grow adjusted to the moonlight rising over the vaulting land, starshine as bright as any ballroom back east in Chicago, Philadelphia, or New York.
He stuffed his hands behind his head as he rolled onto his back and drank deeply of the scents in the room. The freshly dusted tick, emptied of sour straw and refilled that afternoon by the old man.
He remembered Hook taking down the sickle from the porch wall and going to work only yards from the cabin
