17
“WHAT YOU FIGURE on us doing now?” Artus Moser asked his cousin.
Jonah Hook’s lips were drawn across his sharply chiseled face in a thin line he dared not break just yet.
Moser swiped a damp bandanna down his face in what had become an automatic gesture here in late July on the southern plains, deep in the eastern part of Indian Territory, also known as the Nations. They stood on the crude covered porch of a trader’s house, one of those who by government license could legally trade with both the civilized and warrior bands assigned reservations here. While he had been glad to see white faces and hear English, the trader to the Creek tribe had nonetheless been less than forthcoming with information.
Here among the gentle timbered hills that formed the Kiamichi Mountains, Moser and Hook had wandered for days, asking their questions, growing more and more frustrated that so few understood their words, even less understood their attempts at crude sign language—anything to make the Creeks understand they were looking for a large band of white horsemen who were carrying along with them a light-haired white woman and three children.
“We can’t stay here, Jonah.”
“What you want from me?” Hook snapped, his cheeks red with more than the sticky heat. Even the leaves of the hardwood trees seemed to seep a damp, oppressive warmth into the heavy air.
“I come here with you—to help you find Gritta, dammit.” Moser kept his voice low as he glanced back through the open doorway, his eyes finding the trader behind his long counter, stirring a breeze before his face with one of those paper fans.
“C’mon—we gotta get away from here.” Hook stepped off the low porch, heading out.
“Where, Jonah? Back home?”
Hook whirled. “We ain’t got no home back there now. Not you. Not me.”
Moser turned as he heard the scrape of the old trader’s stool on the wood floor. The man was coming out of the steamy darkness of his store, then stopped and leaned against the doorjamb, as if he would go no farther into the heat.
“Didn’t realize you boys was on foot. Come all the way down from Missouri, walking, did you?”
“Most of us walked home from the war—lot farther’n that,” Moser replied. He watched the droplet of sweat creep down the old man’s bulbous nose, wondering when it would fall. Instead, it seemed to cling tenaciously there, pendant like a clear jewel the old man wore.
“Man who walks on foot, and goes off searching for someone who rides a horse, can’t really expect to get anywhere.”
Hook came to the step but did not mount to the porch. “Don’t you think we thought of that? They may be ahead of us—way ahead of us … but that don’t mean I gotta give up just ’cause they’re moving faster’n us.”
The trader fanned himself a bit more, moving the clear drop of sweat back and forth until it fell. “I suppose I wanted to be sure of my first impression of you fellas—that you weren’t here to stir these folks up. Enough of that going on, what with the Cheyenne and Kiowa and those Arapaho pushing up against these Creek from the west. Creek just wanna be left alone, you know.”
“We told you why we come here,” Hook said. “And now, since you can’t help us, we’ll be on our way.” He turned from the porch again, but stopped when the trader’s words yanked him around.
“You got any money on you—we can talk about you boys buying some horses.”
Moser nodded, starting to speak, but Hook opened his mouth first.
“What we need horses for, old man? No one knows a thing about this bunch we’ve been trailing out of Missouri. Ever since we crossed the line into the Territories—seems these bastards just up and disappeared like smoke.”
“Wish I could help you there, truly do. But took me years to get the trust of these people. You gotta understand, these Creek been chivied all the way from Alabam’ by white soldiers not that many years ago. Any white man come in here don’t see a welcome sign hung out.”
“Didn’t expect to stay round here long enough to have no one hug me,” Hook said.
“So you won’t be needing the horses, is it?”
“We could use ’em—we just don’t have no money.”
“Neither one of us come home with anything,” Moser replied, knowing it was a lie. He had seen Jonah dig up those few dollars from under that stone in the hearth. But Artus also knew that money had to last them as long as they could stretch it on the necessaries. Right now, a horse was a luxury. But in glancing at his cousin, Moser saw the light had changed in his eyes.
“I didn’t see no horses out in the corral when we come up,” Hook said suspiciously.
“I won’t keep them out where someone can walk off with them,” the trader explained. He pointed the fan off in a general southern direction. “My wife’s people keep them with their stock. Down by their place, a few miles off.”
“That your wife in there, the Injun squaw?”
“She’s Creek—yes.”
“Handsome woman.”
“Give us twelve children through the years. We almost stopped count on the grandchildren,” the trader said with a smile.
“Her people trade for horses?”
“Only if they know you.”
“They know you, don’t they?”
The trader fanned himself, studying Hook over the top of the fan. “So tell me, what you got to trade if you don’t have money?” He eyed their weapons. “That rifle of yours be worth two horses any day, son.”
“I’ll bet it would, old man,” Hook replied caustically. “It ain’t for sale. How you expect a man to survive out here if he don’t have a rifle?”
“You both hefting around big belt guns—”
“The rifle ain’t for sale.”
“Nothing else you want to trade, like them belt guns?”
“You take ’em for two horses?” Moser asked hopefully.
“I’ve got an old mare, fifteen years she is. Give you her for them two belt guns of yours.”
Hook laughed humorlessly. “You’re crazy, old man. We ain’t interested. C’mon, Artus.”
“Maybe there’s something we can—”
“C’mon, Artus.” He kicked off through the red dust that stived up into the heavy, damp air broken by shafts of unrelenting sunshine that broke through the thick-leafed trees.
Moser wanted to say something to the old man, but could not think of anything. He shrugged and leapt off the porch, following his younger cousin. Artus caught up with Jonah at the trees where they penetrated the cooler, heavy air of the forest, following the trail that had brought them here.
“Where we going now?”
“You’re always asking me. Why don’t you tell me where we ought to go.”
Moser thought hard on it, unable to feel right about anything he might suggest. “I don’t know where, now that we lost that bunch.”
“Then you ain’t a bit of help to us, are you?”
“S’pose not.”
“How ’bout if I suggest something then?”
“All right, Jonah. Where we should go?”
“Get us some horses.”
“Where we gonna get some—” He stopped, remembering. “You ain’t thinking of trying to trade them Creek
