Cry of the Hawk

“If they got any.” Shad’s eyes measured Hickok.

“Who knows, fellas?” Hickok rose and trudged over to his own bedroll, kicking it flat. “All a man can do is hope.”

“If’n I was a praying man, I’d say amen to that. This bunch that Custer’s leading around is about ready to bolt on him,” Sweete said.

“They got the Colorado gold diggings not far yonder, that’s for sure,” Comstock said.

“Lure of gold is strong enough to lead men to point their noses off into Injun country anytime,” Hickok said.

“Trouble is, it ain’t only the lure of gold,” Sweete said. “Maybe now it’s the lure of some decent food, an end to this hot saddle ride, and a chance for a little piece of shade.”

The next dawn came early enough, but saw the column of dusty twos already pushing northwest toward the South Platte. Custer ordered his scouts out far ahead, with orders to set a bruising pace for his command. Into that furnace of early July on the high plains, the Seventh Cavalry marched, eating up mile after mile as the sun rose off the horizon, hung at midsky for the longest time with no water in sight, and slipped off into the western half of that cruel blue dome overhead.

No water. No stopping. No rest for man nor animal. Most of the dogs belonging to troopers, which had trotted out of Fort Hays with the command weeks before, collapsed from thirst and exhaustion as the hours rolled by, mile after grueling nonstop mile put behind the Seventh Cavalry.

Sixty-five miles in one long summer day.

It was just past the first streaking of stars across the prairie sky when Shad Sweete, Comstock, and Hook stopped at the top of a hill. There they spied the beckoning glow of windows below.

“Riverside Station.” Comstock pulled the floppy hat from his head and swiped a greasy sleeve across his dusty brow. His face, like the rest, was streaked with yellow alkali dust and rivulets of sweat.

“That the one Hickok’s been calling Valley Station?” Shad asked, eyeing the narrow ribbon of water, lying like a silver, moonlit thread across the darker prairie land just beyond the three small shacks and a skeletal corral comprising the outpost.

“Water down there?” Hook inquired, his voice cracking with dryness.

“You’ll have your drink soon enough,” Shad said.

“I’m going now.” Jonah ran his tongue over his cracked lips as he nudged heels into his horse’s flanks.

Sweete caught the reins.

“Let go me,” Hook demanded.

“We got a job to do, Jonah. Ride back—”

“You go do that, old man. Only need one to tell them goddamned soldiers to come on. I don’t only smell water—I see it!”

He yanked on the bridle again, causing Hook’s horse to sidestep suddenly. The ex-Confederate fought the reins a moment, then his right hand shot to his belt.

Comstock had his elk-handled quirt tacked down on Hook’s wrist in the next heartbeat. “Take your hand off the gun.”

His dark eyes flared. “Tell the old man take his hand off my horse!”

“We’re going to ride back to the columns now,” Shad said quietly, hearing the coming of hoofbeats.

Hickok was among them, out of the growing darkness, his horse lathered at the withers, foam at the bit. “Trouble here, boys?”

Sweete never took his eyes off Hook. “No trouble, Bill. Me and Jonah here set to come back and give you word.”

“That must be Valley Station down there,” Hickok sighed. “And—praise God—that’s the Platte lying yonder.” He eyed the three scouts in the silver light. Comstock removed his quirt from Jonah’s wrist as Sweete released the bridle.

“C’mon, Will. You and me ride back and give ol’ Horse-Killer the good news about the station and water.” Hickok tilted his head toward Sweete. “Shad, you and Jonah stay here—ride on down and get yourselves a good drink and tell those fellas the Seventh’s coming in to bivouac tonight.”

Shad glanced at Hook. “All right, Bill. Obliged to you.”

Hickok started off, then flung his voice over his shoulder, turning in the saddle. “Just don’t muddy the water too much that it ain’t fit for the rest of us to drink, Jonah!”

They waited a moment, watching Hickok and Comstock disappear into the starry night splayed on the prairie hills before Sweete slapped Hook on the arm.

“Go pulling a gun on me, boy—I’ll break every one of your fingers in that hand I get the chance!”

“You gotta catch me first, old man!” he whooped, pounding heels into his weary horse, bolting off the hilltop.

Shad sang out at the top of his lungs as well when he set his animal in motion. There was no problem getting the horses rolling—both had been anxious on that hilltop, what with the smell of the nearby river in their alkali- crusted nostrils.

Halfway down the gentle slope, another yellow slash opened up on one of the three low-roofed buildings nestled fifty yards from the river. The short rectangle was as quickly filled with first one, then two and finally a third dark shadow, each making its way into the yard. From the glint of lamplight spraying into the dusty yard, Sweete could see the three held rifles at the ready.

“Ho! The ranch!” he hollered out.

“Who goes?”

“By damned—it’s white men!” yelled a second voice from the darkness.

Shad slowed his horse a bit as they loped past the yard and the three shadows, headed for the river. “A thirsty pair of scouts for the army.”

“What outfit?”

“Seventh Cavalry!” he hollered back, twisting in the saddle as Jonah reached the riverbank up ahead with a joyous splash.

“By damned—Custer’s outfit. You can’t be here,” a new voice called out, the body framed in the lamplit doorway. “How the hell you come across that piece of country so quick?”

By that time Sweete was in the water up to his knees, slurping and gurgling. He turned and hurled his voice up the bank to the four civilians who stood looking down on the two scouts and their thirsty horses.

“By damned is right, boys. When you’re chasing Sioux with George Armstrong Custer, you better be ready to ride across the fry pan plains of hell itself at double time!”

“Sweet Jesus, but you can’t be here yet!” the voice muttered from the top of the bank.

Shad spread his arms out, dripping wet from dousing his hair with a hatful of water. It seeped off his mustache and beard. “Take a look, pilgrims. This ain’t no goddamned ghost you got your eyes laid on.”

Hook joyously flung some water his way. “No, sir. We ain’t ghosts a’tall. Just a pair of poor resurrected souls come wandering in off that godforsaken prairie!”

Jonah got to his feet wearily as Hickok and Sweete came up to the small knot of civilian scouts huddled beneath the stars.

“No word waiting for Custer when we got in,” Hickok told them. Beyond the station’s three low-roofed buildings, the Seventh Cavalry was going into camp. The twinkling of those first few fires brightened the noisy celebration of water.

“Where we head from here—Custer figure that out yet?” Comstock asked.

“He wired for written orders from Sherman … Sheridan—anyone at this point, fellas,” Hickok explained. Then he glanced at Sweete.

The old mountain trapper nodded. “That’s when Custer found out the post commander at Sedgwick already sent written orders out to Custer. Somewhere … out there”—he flung his arm southwest—“there’s a Lieutenant Lyman Kidder and ten troopers of the Second U.S. Cavalry hunting for us now.”

Comstock dug a toe into the sandy soil. “Unless Pawnee Killer’s Sioux already got ’em.”

The group fell quiet a moment. Then Hickok spoke again.

“I figure we’ll find out soon enough what happened to that patrol. As for us, grab what shut-eye you can.