“I do—and it’s gonna be your brother, General.”
For a long moment the sun beat down on that stretch of prairie river, while the water continued to riffle around the horses’ legs and Artus Moser’s bound and bloody body.
Finally. “Cut the prisoner loose,” Custer said.
“Don’t back down, Autie!” Tom said. “He ain’t got the nerve to shoot me.”
Hook leveled the pistol at the younger brother’s heart, his arm straightening.
“I don’t have time to find out, Lieutenant Custer,” said the elder brother. “We have Indians to track and Indians to fight. Not our own teamsters and scouts. It’s time this outfit was on the march. Now, Sergeant—cut the prisoner loose. Cut all them loose. We’re pointing this bunch south, to Fort Wallace!”
Hook waited as Custer wheeled from the bank and disappeared among the gathered crowd in dusty blue. Some of the half dozen soldiers grumbled, most of all their sergeant as he turned his detail around and trudged away up the slope.
“You heard the general—cut my cousin loose, soldier,” Hook repeated.
As the pair of soldiers led their horses out of the river, Jonah went to his knees in the water beside Artus, dragging his cousin against him, cradling his head, stroking his wet, gritty hair, wiping sand from Moser’s mouth and eyes and nostrils.
“Ain’t no one gonna treat my family this way,” Hook said quietly. “Don’t care if I gotta take on the whole goddamned Yankee army. Ain’t no one gonna dare treat my family this way.”
32
THEY HAD COVERED at least half the ground from the South Platte to Fort Wallace, marching on a trail a shade east of south.
Shad Sweete was today riding point, far in the advance of Custer’s columns. Alone. For three days Jonah Hook had been assigned to bring up the rear of the columns, closing file and watching the backtrail for both stragglers and lurking hostiles. At least that’s what Custer called it.
Yet it was really nothing more than Custer’s way of punishing the civilian scout for what had happened back at the South Fork of the Republican. Make Hook eat the dust of the entire regiment and wagon train as the command ground its way through the low, grass-covered hills of western Kansas. Every night a few miles closer to Fort Wallace and the Denver Road. That much closer to some real food and some shade.
Someone had reminded Sweete this morning that it was the twelfth. July. Just the word itself had always made him hot enough even without this midsummer sun suspended overhead. At least it was nudging off midsky now. Casting a little bit of a shadow it seemed. Not like at full high, when the only shadow a man could see was directly under a horse’s belly.
It was in that bright light shimmering off the rolling prairie land that he spotted the big-winged black birds fluttering down to roost not far ahead. They were cackling, fighting among one another over their carrion—but scattered momentarily at his approach. The great buzzards came to a rest just yards away, craning their great wrinkled necks at the man as he brought his horse to a halt, having first circled upwind.
A terrible stench greeted Shad when he drew close.
Trying not to breathe through his nose, he ground-hobbled the horse with the rein, then stepped up, cautiously, his eyes watering with the strong smell of death. His skin already crawled, knowing this was only the beginning of it.
“Damn,” he muttered when he recognized what was left of the telltale brand on the torn meat of the rear haunch.
Without slowing, the old man snagged up the rein and did not use the stirrup to vault atop the saddle. In a tight circle he brought his horse around, hammering it with his heels. He feared he knew already.
At the top of the next hill, he was sure of it. Ahead of him, in that broad bowl of rolling country, he spotted three more … then a fourth … four bunches altogether, knots of the big-winged black birds swirling overhead, landing,
He had seen enough and turned his horse around, pounding hooves back across the sunbaked prairie to the head of the strung-out cavalry column. Shad could see Hickok’s mouth
“Rider coming in, General! It’s Sweete.”
He brought the big Morgan mare hard around, slowing her, nostrils flaring as he matched the gait of the lieutenant colonel’s mount.
“You and Hickok might wanna come have a look. Something I run onto that will snag your interest, General.”
“Indians?” Custer asked, his pale, sunburned face flushing with excitement.
“Not exactly.”
“Some sign of hostiles?” Hickok inquired.
Shad leveled his eyes on the young chief of scouts. “All the sign a man would care to see.”
Custer turned in the saddle, flinging orders to his adjutant and to the officer of the day to continue their march at the present pace. Then he broke out Major Elliott, along with a sergeant and a half dozen men to escort the two officers behind the two scouts.
“Lead on, Mr. Sweete.”
Without a word, Shad reined away from the head of the column, pointing his nose a little more east of south than the line of march had been taking.
“Buzzards?” Custer inquired as they topped the knoll where they could see the first gathering of the huge flesh-necked meat-eaters.
“Something dead down there, General,” Hickok said.
Custer cleared his throat, removing one of the damp deerskin gloves and stuffing it in his belt. “Mr. Sweete will tell us if we’re going to find a body down there.”
“Only a horse.”
He led them far around the bloating carcass of the white horse, coming back into the stinking carrion on the upwind drift of the prairie breeze rustling the dried grass. That gentle wind and the noisy protests of the scattered buzzards proved the only sound, besides the slow clop of the hooves, then the scrape and grind of Custer’s boots as he got down, alone, and strode purposefully forward to have a look for himself.
He came back to his mount after but a moment, only then removing his hand from his mouth and nose.
“There’s more, Mr. Sweete?”
Shad waited for Custer to swing into the saddle. “Up yonder, General.”
“More of the same?”
Pursing his lips to keep from puking the words, he wagged his head. “No. It’s soldiers.”
Sweete and Hickok watched Custer’s lips form the word, but left it unspoken as he sighed, his eyes narrowing on the middistance. “Take us to them, Mr. Sweete.”
They put the miles behind them, not that many, really. But enough to see it had been a running battle. By the time they topped the last knoll and Shad reined up the entire escort, the flat, sun-shimmering bowl lay before them, populated now with only the
“One of ’em had his horse go down on him back there,” Shad explained. “Signs of his boots tell it. He was running hard. Iron-shod hoofprints circled back, picked the fella up, and they tried to make it double.”
Custer swallowed. “They didn’t make it, did they?”
“None of ’em, General. I figure that first bunch of buzzards up ahead, down there—just one horse and two bodies there—they made a hell of a fight of it.”
The lieutenant colonel ground his teeth. “Let’s go.”
One horse. Two men. One directly in the tangle of the dead animal’s legs, taking cover. The other body a few yards off. Either dragged there by the warriors working over the bodies, or by the huge, broad-winged birds attempting to drag off their stinking meal-claim.
