and Sweete pushed the rest on down the Powder until total darkness made it impossible to pursue the hostiles any longer.
“North’s sending two of his best ahead on foot to stay with the trail.” Sweete settled onto the cold ground beside Hook, their horses nearby, jaws grinding the dry, brittle grasses with a reassuring crunch. “Get your saddle off and wipe that horse down with some grass, son. We’ll pick up and move out soon as it gets light enough to follow in a few hours.”
As far as Hook was concerned, it was still too damned dark to do anything but sleep when the old scout rousted him from the warmth of those two blankets he had wrapped himself in beneath the whirling stars overhead. So he was amazed that by the time he had tightened the cinch and remouthed the bit he had loosened while the horse grazed, the sky along the east had grayed enough to allow a man to pick out nearby landmarks and just barely make sense out of the trail that hugged the bank of the Powder River.
It gave him a newfound respect for not only the Pawnee trackers, but for Shad Sweete as well.
“One of these days, you get to Missouri like you said—I want you to teach me everything you know about tracking the enemy.”
Sweete smiled slowly. “Don’t have to wait till I come visiting you and your family down in Missouri. We got plenty time to get started on your lessons while we’re here.”
Just before sunrise, they came up on the two trackers North had sent ahead. Unable to understand either the Pawnee tongue or the sign language used in that gray dawn, Hook nonetheless sensed he understood the import of their talk. Especially when he looked on down the direction the trail was taking and spotted what the trackers were indicating.
Thin wisps of smoke rising slowly into the still, cool dawn air. Behind the bluffs not that far downriver.
“They’re Cheyenne, all right!” Sweete whispered with fiery excitement. “Northern—and that means they’ll fight like the dickens, Jonah. You loaded and ready for bear?”
“S’pose I’m ready as I’ll ever be, Shad. We gonna follow ’em again till we catch ’em?”
“Shit—we’ve caught ’em. Them two hurried back to meet us along the trail—to tell North the Cheyenne was already packing up to move out.”
As North and Sweete led their forty-eight Pawnee around the base of the bluff toward a thick stand of alder bordering the Powder, Hook caught his first glimpse of the quarry they had chased for a day and most of the night.
“Watch out for the women, if there be any, Jonah,” Shad instructed at the Confederate’s side. “But just remember the squaws can be as deadly as the bucks. They’ll fight hard as their men—God bless ’em.
Hook watched as the old trapper licked the pad of his thumb, then wiped it down the bridge of his nose. Wetting his thumb again, Sweete made a cross just below the brim of his old hat, swiping across the eyebrows. As North kicked his bunch into a gallop with a wild screech, Shad opened his eyes, having made his private medicine. He grinned over at the startled Hook and added his voice to the wild calls of the Pawnee and the not-too-distant cries of the Cheyenne.
“
With the surge of his own hot adrenaline, the sweep of the charging horses kicking up dust and clods of yellow soil into his nostrils, the wild cries of both Pawnee and the retreating Cheyenne, who now understood they were being attacked by Indians and not white men, Hook fought down the bile of fear for the unknown.
His hands were sweating on the reins and as he thumbed back the hammer on the carbine, finding the cap securely hugging the nipple. A trickle of cold ran between the cheeks of his ass as they burst past the stand of alder where the Cheyenne had camped for the night. The odors of their fires were strong in his nostrils as they shot through the grove. Something foreign on the wind as well—it made him think he was actually smelling the warriors who had spent the night on that ground.
Bullets sang through the air, their music brutally yanking him back to surviving in battle once more. But there was no clear battle line. The Cheyenne had spread out on their front, half heading toward the riverbank, and the others hurrying toward the low, chalky bluffs. Already among them were the first of the Pawnee, cutting off the escape of those Cheyenne who stayed atop their ponies.
Most of the enemy had dismounted and were turning their animals loose before wheeling around to find cover and return the Pawnee fire.
The cries of animals and men were loud in his ears—nothing new, for he had been blooded all the way from Pea Ridge to Corinth where the Yankees found him in that scooped-out depression he had crawled into when he could not retreat—not with that bleeding leg wound that seeped his juices in a greasy track across the forest floor.
The Yankee army surgeons had told their prisoner his leg would have to come off. But he had refused their suggestion of help by knife and saw.
“Better to die soon with two legs, than to die the slow death of a cripple prisoner of the Yankees, with no hope of running for it,” he had told them, gritting his teeth on the pain that tasted like sucking on a rusty iron nail.
Instead, Jonah had requested whiskey and got brandy instead, along with sulfur to pour into his own wound. Two days later he dug the Union minie ball out while the surgeons watched, unashamedly amazed at the Rebel’s grit. Pinching that smear of lead bullet up between his fingers, and slowly opening the pink purple muscle with slow strokes of a surgeon’s straight razor, Hook swallowed down more and more of the pain with each heartbeat. Along with more of the brandy he asked for, and poured into the wound when he finished—then promptly passed out.
Jonah found a target ahead, climbing the low bluff just in front of him. Lining the warrior in his sight, a sudden rustle of brush made him glance to his left as a warrior sprang from the alders and willow, yanking up his captured rifle.
There was no time to think, or aim. Jonah whirled and pulled the trigger as he saw the warrior’s muzzle spit a burst of orange. Like jagged teeth scraping across his flesh, the bullet stung his upper arm at the same instant the Cheyenne was catapulted backward into the underbrush.
Jonah stood there, breathing deep, slowly climbing down from the saddle, gripping his bloody arm. Never had he killed anyone so close. The Indian lay there, not moving while Hook quickly glanced at the long, bloody track parting the sleeve of his blue army tunic. He didn’t like wearing Yankee blue anyway.
He had time only to spin, finding a second warrior leaping over the dead body, a small-headed tomahawk held high in the air. Hook met the charge with only his muscle, pushing the weapon into the air with his empty rifle. Both men tumbled, the warrior falling forward, Hook collapsing backward with the force of the collision.
The warrior sailed on over, sprawling on his back as Hook arose, swung the carbine, and connected in the Cheyenne’s rib cage full force. Air exploded from the warrior as he reeled backward, clawing for the knife at his belt.
With a shrill growl that rose to become the Rebel yell, Hook charged the ten feet separating them, driving the rifle butt into the Indian’s chest. The knife dropped. Hook smashed the butt into the Indian’s jaw.
The warrior collapsed, his mouth spurting shiny crimson across his yellow face paint, splattering his chest. He growled back, like a wounded animal, dragging feet under him, preparing to rise.
Taking the rifle barrel in both hands, Hook swung it just as he had battered axes at trees in both the Shenandoah Valley back in Virginia, and on that land he cleared to build a home for Gritta and their children. That quiet, narrow valley back home.
Blood splattered on him as the buttstock cracked against the skull.
The Cheyenne collapsed like a damp lampwick.
Jonah Hook stumbled backward one step, then two. And on the third, he collapsed as the creeping darkness washed over him.
10
