the corners.
“Fordham, come over here and show us where you were on your journey to Kansas.”
Wiser watched as the two of them hunched over the map, Fordham moving his finger this way, then that, at times a little uncertain.
“I don’t read much, Colonel—”
“It doesn’t matter, Riley.”
“But this looks familiar … the rivers and creeks here.”
“Good. Now show us where the outlying settlements are from here, and here. With the railroad coming their way—it means gold for us. Lots of gold.”
Wiser watched and listened as Fordham went on, explaining the fruits of his scout north into Kansas Territory. But Boothog listened only halfheartedly. He glanced at the nearby tent flaps, not daring to let Usher catch him looking. Yet it excited him nonetheless to know that behind those flaps was the light-haired, blue-eyed Missouri woman they had captured two years before. He had rarely seen her since—only moving from the tent to Usher’s ambulance, where she rode hidden, always with a cloak hood over her head, helped along by Usher and the Negro manservant. And Wiser never heard her anymore. In the beginning she had cried out each time Usher climbed atop her. But it hadn’t taken long for that to come to an end.
She rarely made a peep now.
Still, Wiser hungered for her. There was something in the woman that he had never found in the others. But then, the rest had all had many men before him. They were used, soiled merchandise. Not like the settler woman.
That was why Wiser wanted the girl, the woman’s daughter—in the worst way. More and more over the last months, he found himself getting dry-mouthed just looking at the young girl. Waking up at nights, knowing he had dreamt of her. Wondering if he could wait long enough, till she was old enough and Usher would finally give her over to him. Then at last, Boothog would have one of the two things he wanted most.
Telling himself he must be satisfied with only one of them.
Simply because Major Lemuel Wiser couldn’t bring himself to believe he would ever have the nerve to kill Jubilee Usher.
Not that the rider didn’t look one whole hell of a lot like someone he knew—or had known—but that it just didn’t seem likely to find the man out here. Must be the sun playing tricks on him.
No way Jonah Hook would be riding in behind Milner and James Butler Hickok, with the rest of those civilian scouts. Hook had gone back home to Missouri, and Sweete doubted there would be anything that could drag the Confederate off his farm, what with the way he talked and talked about his family and his place all through those months they had shared out on the Emigrant Road and up to the Powder River country. Likely nothing could shake Hook loose.
“Shad Sweete!”
“That you, Joe?” he called back to California Joe Milner.
The long-bearded plainsman brought his mule to a halt beside Sweete there at the edge of the parade of Fort Harker, central Kansas. “Before you go to hugging your how-dos on me, I figured I’d better ask you if you know this young fella. He claims you do.”
“Howdy, Shad,” the thin one said, kicking a leg over the saddle and dropping to the ground on both feet.
“Jonah?”
“By damned,” Joe said, “you do know one another!”
Shad embraced Hook fiercely. “What the hell you—”
“I don’t think Joe believed me when I told him I’d rid with you and Bridger,” Hook said. “Gabe here with you?”
“He’s gone back east, Jonah,” Shad said quietly. “Figures his time might come soon.”
“He dying?”
“Not just yet. But he’s give up on scouting for a time. Now answer my question, boy—what the devil brings you here when you got family back to home depending on you?”
Shad watched as Jonah glanced at Milner, and Milner urged his mule away with the rest of the scruffy civilian scouts James Butler Hickok had brought in from Hays to join up with Custer’s chief of scouts.
Jonah’s eyes narrowed. “They’re gone, Shad.”
“Dead?”
He shook his head. “I wish I knew. Not a trace.”
“Up and gone—like smoke?”
“Stole.”
“Took off, like prisoners?”
“Or worse.”
“You know who?”
“A little. A bad bunch running through Missouri there at the end of the war. Taking what they wanted from farms and settlements.”
“Heard tales there was a lot of that,” Sweete replied, not knowing what else to say.
Inside were a hundred feelings felt for the young man right now—but none which Shad could put to word. Instead, he drew Jonah near again. A fierce hug.
“Damn, it’s good to see you, Shad.” He pulled back, dragging a hand angrily beneath his nose. “Want you meet a cousin of mine. Hired on for the wagon train.”
“What you been doing since last I saw you?” Shad asked, eyeing the columns of cavalry pulling in behind the scouts, marching across the parade and preparing to go into camp on the far side of Fort Harker.
“Got back home finally, that winter. Found my place empty, almost like it was a coffin somebody had dragged the body out of.” Hook described the scene, kneading the leather rein in his hands as the spring sun loped down into the west. “Run onto my cousin at the place, and we went into town to try to find out something.”
“Anybody know what come of your family?”
“Only the old sheriff. Enough to send us off on the trail of that bunch into Indian Territory.”
“Wagh!” Sweete grunted. “That’s some. Likely that’s where the trail up and disappeared.”
“Nobody likely to talk to me and Artus down there. Finally run out of money and come north to work for the railroad.”
“Hard doin’s, Jonah.”
“Hunted buffalo, Shad.”
“Don’t that beat all by a long chalk now!”
“Then freeze-up come, and we hunkered down in a little dugout near Fort Hays for the winter.”
“Just the two of you?”
He dug a toe into the rain-dampened earth. “Had a Pawnee gal with me.”
“Been some time, Jonah—you without a woman. How’d you run onto her?”
“That’s a story for another time, how I come to be toting her out of Abilene. That’s where I first run onto Hickok. There was some bad characters and … the woman saved my life.” Hook yanked aside his shirt and longhandles to show the puckered bullet hole high in his chest. “Army doctor pulled the bullet out over to Fort Hays.”
“Lordee,” Shad whispered. “Some winter doings, weren’t they?”
“When green-up come, we needed work, and run onto California Joe, said he was hired on to work for Hickok for this big army march against the Injuns.”
“Hickok remember you?”
“When he found out I’d hired on to scout for this march, with California Joe, Hickok told the rest I’d do to back him up in a hot fight of it.”
“Hickok’s all right, Jonah. A square shoot any day. Damn! But this ain’t the first time we’ve marched with the army together!”
“Damn well pray it’s the last, Shad.”
