youths were never allowed to attend councils as important as this.
That first day Senator John B. Henderson had proposed to the assembled chiefs that the Cheyenne and Arapaho bands be moved south to the Arkansas River while the Kiowas could settle on land farther south along the Red River. As soon as the head men would agree to this proposal and formally touch the pen, the army would distribute the promised goods. First the Kiowa, then the Comanche, followed by the Arapaho, and finally—after many days of debate—the Cheyenne agreed to the white man’s terms.
Two days it took them to decide, two days as well after Jonah spoke with Major Elliott at that little fire beside the gurgling music of Medicine Lodge Creek, beneath the wide autumn black canopy with an egg-yolk moon rising off the horizon to the east.
Their job done after much debate and political posturing, the commissioners informed the chiefs they were leaving now, heading east to inform the Great Father of their success. In leaving, they were ordering the issuance of the promised presents. Tall side-walled army freight wagons rumbled into the meadow, emptied of everything in three huge piles: on the west, a pile for the Apache and Arapaho; on the east, a pile for the Kiowa and Comanche; and in the middle, a pile for the great Cheyenne of the plains.
There was so much there, and the celebrating was much greater than anything Shad Sweete would have ever expected, more than he had ever seen among the Cheyenne.
Little Robe, Black Kettle, Medicine Arrow, and Turkey Leg each sent their warrior societies forward to be in charge of a fair distribution of the presents among their bands. One by one the women were given kettles and axes, blankets and clothing, flour and sugar and coffee and more. Never before had any of them seen anything like this.
Perhaps the white man does number like the stars in the sky, Shad heard them whisper among themselves during that day and a half it took to distribute all the gifts placed on the prairie for the Cheyenne bands.
No man, no woman nor child rode from that meadow back to their villages. Every pony and pack animal they put to use to haul their new riches, stacked high and cumbersome and wobbly on animal backs or on swaybacked, groaning travois. Many times the poorly tied packs fell off ponies and burst open across the grass trampled with the pounding of many moccasins and hooves. Just as many travois poles snapped under the great weight required of them.
Women muttered, complaining of their plight, having to pack and repack and struggle along with their newfound wealth. But they smiled all the same. And no woman among them complained all that much.
With the days growing shorter and the nights colder, Shad watched with the other scouts as the bands moved out onto the mapless prairie, slowly marching into the four winds. Along the bank of Medicine Lodge Creek that last morning, the old mountain man found the water slicked with a thin, fragile layer of ice scum. Winter was due on the high plains. Winter would not be denied.
With the presents distributed, the women happy, and the chiefs satisfied that their hunting grounds had been somehow preserved by touching the pen to the white man’s talking paper, the civilian scouts found themselves out of a job for the coming cold that would one day soon squeeze down on the land.
Sweete thought of Shell Woman. Funny to think of her not as Toote, but as Shell Woman. But then, he had found himself among her own people for the better part of the last two weeks now. And in that time had not really thought of her as being among and surrounded by his own people—where she often camped at Fort Laramie, waiting for his return to her lodge. Perhaps by now she and Pipe Woman were in a winter camp far up in the Powder River or Rosebud country.
But it hurt, thinking on them now as he watched the great cloud of dust rise into the clear, autumn-cold sky above the rear marchers—these Southern Cheyenne going off to find their own winter camps. It hurt, that thought of mother and daughter, Cheyenne both. So only natural now that he think on father and son. One a white man, happy only when he was among an adopted people. And the other a half-breed, a young man denying his white blood and swearing vengeance on all white men.
What overwhelming hate must fill the heart of his son. One day there would be no
“You coming, Shad?”
Startled, Sweete looked up from staring at the march of the disappearing Cheyenne, yanked of a sudden out of his reverie. Jonah Hook had come up with the horses and that one pack animal they had shared between them this last few weeks. “S’pose there’s no reason to be hanging on here.”
He glanced over the great, empty campsites strung up and down the banks of the little creek, grass trampled and pocked with lodge circles and fire pits, pony droppings and bones and the remains of willow bowers used by the young warriors too old to live any longer with their families but too young yet to have a wife and lodge and children too.
His eyes misted for a moment as he swallowed the pain of loss. To be hated, despised, cursed by a son was a deeper wound than he had ever suffered—across all those years of trapping and freezing, of fighting Indians and grizzly and loneliness and time itself. To stand in this place and realize what with so much time gone from his life, all he had to show for it was a son who had spit on his father’s name, his father’s race—his father’s blood.
“Winter’s coming, Shad,” Jonah said, slowly easing forward after he rose to the saddle. He crossed his wrists atop the wide saddlehorn. “Maybe we can go find us some work down south.”
He remembered. “The Territories?”
Hook nodded. “Down with the Creek and Choctaw. Sniff around for some word.”
Shad rose to the saddle and settled his rear gently against the cantle for the coming ride. How he wanted now to be plopped down in the sun, leaning back against the fragrant homeyness of her lodge, listening to the kettles bubble and smelling the pungent tang of autumn on the same winds that drove the long-necked honkers across the endless blue in great, dark vees. Going south.
Where Jonah yearned to go as well for the winter.
“Let’s settle up at Larned, Jonah,” he said, easing the horse away, pointing their noses east out of the meadow, toward the sun now fully off the horizon. A new day of opportunity and possibilities. Another chance to deal with fears and disappointments and pain that no man ought to know.
He glanced at the silent man riding beside him, seeing the gentle curve of a slight smile on Hook’s bony face. Something tugged at Shad now—seeing the comfort it gave the Confederate to be heading down south at last. To be going where there might be some answers.
And in that moment, he felt a little peace within himself to balance out that pain. For some time it had been there, and he had chosen not to realize it—this peace versus the pain.
Now he felt it, assured by it, comforted by it. Because so jumbled up were those thoughts of father and son with thoughts of him and Jonah Hook … that it caused him confusion and comfort, guilt and a sense of completeness never before experienced—that left him wondering where to go for help.
Knowing the only help for Shad Sweete rested within.
40
“THEY WAS TRICKED—and we helped the army do it, Jonah.”
Hook gazed through his own red-rimmed eyes at the moist, bleary eyes of the old mountain man across the table from him, at Shad Sweete’s mouth as he stumbled over some of the words.
“For better than a day now you’ve been sitting here in this stinking hole, washing your tonsils with this whiskey, old man,” Jonah said. “And all that time I been telling you your crying ain’t gonna change a thing.”
“Was hoping you cared.”
“I do care, dammit.” He slapped a flat hand on his chest. “But what’m I to do by my lonesome? What you wanna do, huh?”
The whiskey had long ago passed the point of warming Jonah’s belly. It felt like there was a hole burned right through him, hollering for something more than the cheap grain alcohol turned amber with a plug of tobacco and potent with some red pepper. Some called it prairie dew, others stumble-foot. Jonah just called it whiskey.
