“You got two graves up there to your place. That’s your family buried there.”
“But, Jonah—you don’t know what’s happened to your family.”
“That’s why I’m leaving the graves open.” He dropped the spade beside the last hole and turned away toward the cabin. “Maybe it’s like old man Hosking said it—they’re good as dead. Until I find ’em. And find who dragged ’em off.”
“Jonah!”
Hook turned, finding Moser pulling his misshaped hat from his head.
“Man never walks away from a grave without saying a few words.”
“What you mean?”
Moser waved a hand helplessly, searching for the words. “This is some like a funeral to you, ain’t it?”
He thought a minute. “I suppose it is.”
“We ought to say some special church words over these holes afore we leave.”
Hook came back, then dragged the floppy slouch hat from his long hair. “You’re right.”
Jonah stood there a few moments, sorting through a lot of thoughts. Mostly struggling to swallow down the rage and despair so that he could speak some of those few church words he could remember now without making them come out like he was flinging his anger up at God and the heavens.
“I really ain’t any good at this, Artus,” he whispered as if some-one or some-thing near might overhear.
“We gotta say something.”
“All right,” Hook sighed. “This is tough, Lord. The worst it’s ever been inside of me. Feel damned near gutted—I’m sorry for swearing. Do too much of that, I know. I’m not always what you want of me, I suppose. Never been much of one to get down on my prayer bones and taffy up to you, God. Hell, you know what’s in my heart better’n anyone. No sense me telling you what you already know’s inside me. All that’s left inside me now.”
Jonah knelt and picked up some of the fresh spoil beside the last grave. “This is for little Zeke. Born and baptized as Ezekiel before you, Lord.” Jonah tossed the moist clods into the dark hole.
Moving to the next hole, he spilled some loose soil through his fingers. “This is for Jeremiah. Until my boy and me can fill this damned hole up together.”
“You ain’t supposed to swear when you’re talking to the Lord, Jonah.”
“I’m sure He’s heard me swear enough that he thinks nothing of it now, Artus.” Hook stopped by the third grave. “And dear little Hattie—until you and your daddy can plant some wildflowers here on this spot.”
He felt it welling and didn’t know how to make it stop as he stepped to the final hole. And stared down into its emptiness, much like his own center, except for the anger and the despair—nothing else there but black emptiness.
It shook him a moment, right down to those old boots Boatwright had given him.
“Sometimes I curse myself, dear woman,” he began, quietly. “Ever bringing you out here from our home at the foot of Big Cobbler. Curse myself for wanting to make a home that would be ours—not your family’s or mine. Something that could be ours alone.”
As he began to sob, some of the tears fell on the back of his dirty hands he held clasped in front of him, trembling as they crimped a hold on that slouch hat.
“This never would happen back in the Shenandoah. Out here—in this land where there’s no law to speak of, where the guilty can ride in here and murder and steal, then run and hide in the Nations—” He stopped of a sudden, feeling out of control as he let the words spill.
“Pray that I find you, Gritta. Wherever they’ve taken you and the children. For the sake of them. For the sake of what we could be again—pray that I find you.”
He turned away suddenly, unable to go on, the last words choked with bile. Angrily he wheeled and kicked dirt into the last grave, then spun again and set off toward the cabin.
It was long after they had started out, on foot, south toward Fort Smith, that Jonah finally felt like he could talk again. The sky had cleared the last two days, and winter’s cold had gripped the land with an unrelenting hold. Their breath formed frosty streamers behind them as they moved along at a brisk pace, not only to cover ground, but to keep warm as well.
“Someone’s gonna have to prove to me they’re dead. You put your daddy in the ground—so you know he’s dead. Me—I ain’t got none of that. Not for the children. Not for Gritta.”
“Don’t have to explain it to me, Jonah. Just tell me why we’re headed south. I figured we’d be heading west, into Kansas where them Yankee jayhawkers always came from before.”
“No, not this time,” he shivered with the cold. “We’re going someplace else.”
“The Nations?”
Jonah stopped, dragging Moser to a halt. “How’d you know?”
Artus shrugged. “You said it there at the graves—about the Nations.”
Then Jonah remembered. “Yeah. I gotta watch that—getting angry and spilling things like that. Always done it.”
“Why there?”
“I figure that’s the best place to start looking.”
Moser wagged his head as they started walking again, both grown cold from the standing. “Still don’t get it. You must have a good reason to wanna—”
“Boatwright told me.”
“Told you what? When did he tell you anything like that? You gotta be getting crazy about this—”
“I’m not crazy!” Hook growled. “Boatwright told me while you was pulling out the clothes for us. Whispered to me that he had good information that was give to him—about that bunch come through here end of last summer. They was talking about heading south and west into the Nations.”
Moser smiled slowly. “Shit, Jonah—if that don’t beat all! This pair of country boys got us something to track now!”
“
Mike Sullivan glanced about him for a moment, then drew his shoulders back. “I said: you don’t always got first right to every woman we take.”
“That’s what I thought you said.” Wiser shuffled over to stand beside the frightened dark-skinned Creek woman they had captured earlier that spring morning.
April was half gone, and the men sensed the warmth in their blood, making them randy and ready to mount the first female they had come across after pulling out of the streamside camp, riding on into the timbered mountains in the foggy eastern stretches of Indian Territory. Boothog himself had grown weary of a long and cold winter. And the nigger girl.
They had left her body somewhere back among those limestone caves.
Now Wiser became acutely aware of the way the men stared at his left boot, which concealed the deformed foot. Whenever he caught a man staring, they looked away quickly, almost ashamed. More so afraid.
“Whenever you’re ready to take over, Sullivan—just let me know. I’ll step aside, you think you’re man enough to be second in command to Colonel Usher.”
Wiser slowly stepped behind the frightened, trembling young woman, her broad nose and thick lips betraying her mixed blood. Creek Creole. Black slave blood tainting the Indian purity, he thought, as he ran his hand down the curve of her neck, pushing aside her dress so that he could feel along her smooth shoulder the color of milk and coffee. As he did it, his left hand slipped unseen to the inside pocket he had sewn into his wool mackinaw.
Sullivan appeared buoyed by the clear hostility for Wiser he believed he saw some of the other men show. He took a step forward.
“I figure I’m ready to tell you to step aside, Major. I’m man enough to take over from you—and the rest of the men figure you’ve had too long a turn at the reins on us.”
“They do?” Boothog asked, not looking up, content still to stroke the young woman’s bare shoulder, sensing her shudder with his caress. Like a frightened bird in the palm of his hand … the way he remembered it as a boy, before crushing the life from the tiny bird, sensing the strong muscles and bone resist his grinding crush in those last seconds of fight.
“Go ’head—tell him, fellas.” Sullivan looked from side to side at the rest, almost twenty strong now, and more
