what they did about eating when a man had the chance to—a man never knew when his next meal would come. Try as he might, though, Nathan Deidecker could not get used to rising early, even before the sun had warmed the air, to eat a big breakfast before they would ride all day without stopping for a midday meal. This pushing his body to its limits was something new to the reporter born and raised in Iowa, gone after six early years of news work to Nebraska when he had the offer of a position with the prestigious
“So the chromo back at your cabin wasn’t you at all, was it, Jonah?”
With that question coming out of the blue after so much silence shared between them, the old man looked up from the prairie onion he was slicing with a belt knife. “You had it figured all wrong, Nate?” He chuckled easily. Then he stared somewhere past the newsman, saying, “No fault of your’n. Jeremiah did favor me in some ways. Near a spitting image of me in my younger days. That boy got the worst of me, Gritta always said. And I always answered by saying Jeremiah got the best of her.”
Then Hook’s eyes came back to Deidecker’s face as he said, “Proud to think you thought Jeremiah was me of a time. That boy was really a handsome lad—more so than I ever was. But, then, I always was proud of my boys … both of ’em.”
“You still miss Zeke, I can tell.”
“Shows that much, does it?” He sighed. “Yes. Proud of my youngest. He died defending his people. Died fighting for the ones he loved. I have to remind myself of that when I get feeling like there’s little else left for an old man like me. And then too I remind myself that I gave my boys a good legacy. There’s something real decent about my boy dying defending those he loved.”
Nate allowed the old frontiersman some time down in his thoughts. Later, as a breeze came up, Deidecker asked, “So Jeremiah did go with you to find her—Gritta—like you said he wanted to there at the side of the woman’s grave?”
Loose-shouldered, Hook shrugged, answering. “We’ll talk more about that last hunt when we get back to home tomorrow afternoon. After we see to Gritta.”
“She cook when you’re gone?”
He wagged his head. “No. Have to leave her food to eat. Can’t let her get her hands on matches. It’s just that … she’s got so forgetful, she might hurt herself. I leave her food what I’ve already cooked if she gets to being hungry. It ain’t often that she eats more’n a mouthful at a time. For the life of me don’t know how she keeps up her strength way she does.”
“At first I thought—well, about that picture at the cabin—thought the woman in the picture was Grass Singing, the Pawnee woman you told me about meeting in Abilene. Then I later had it figured she was Pipe Woman.”
“Shad’s daughter?” Hook asked, his eyes gone wistful in looking at the sunset, the last rosy rays of Spanish gold streaking through the quaking aspen snatched and teased by the breeze. “That’s one woman would’ve been a handful for any man to tackle, Nate. In or out of the blankets. My, but was she ever a prize, that one.”
“Do I detect some old longing there, Jonah?”
He shrugged. “No doubt to it, son. Things been different … well, let’s just say other men might’n stayed on with her and give up what everyone claimed was a hopeless chase.”
“But you didn’t give up, Jonah. That’s the miracle of all of this to me—and you got Gritta back.”
“Me and Jeremiah brung her back, Nate.”
“Where is Jeremiah now? Does he live close?”
“No,” he answered, an immense sadness in that single word. “Down in the Territories.”
“Didn’t you know? Last year Congress made the place a state, Jonah.”
“They have, have they?” A faint smile crossed his face. “Good for them. The Injuns, that is.”
“Call it Oklahoma. Some say it means ’home of the red man.’”
“Home of the red man. Fitting, you know?”
“What’s Jeremiah do down there? Farm?”
“Last I heard, he was working for the army—training horses for the cavalry. Buys and trains mounts.” Abruptly Jonah beamed as proud as any father could, declaring, “He rode with Roosevelt right up San Juan Hill into the teeth of them Spaniards’ guns, you know.”
“If that doesn’t beat all, Jonah!” Nate exclaimed, sensing at least one story that might come from Jeremiah’s remarkable life. Taken by the marauders; sold to comancheros; his years among the Comanche and his life as a warrior on the southern plains. Yes, Nate glowed, knowing he had more stories he could write: front-page, banner- headline stories.
Deidecker said, “So Jeremiah was the handsome young man in the chromo you have back at the cabin.”
“Yes, Nate. That was took a few years after we went back to Cassville to fill in those two graves in seventy- five. Time I buried Zeke.”
Nathan studied the old man. Jonah was frozen, staring down at his hand held motionless over the onion and knife and the bark slab he was using as a cutting board. Deidecker’s heart lurched for the pain that remembrance must have caused the old man.
Quietly Deidecker said, “No one could ever blame himself for what happened to Zeke the way you’ve been blaming yourself all these years.”
For a long, long time Jonah did not answer. When he did, he began by working the knife down through the onion again. “Should’ve brung him back alive too.”
“Three out of four—good Lord … after all those years, Jonah—my God! Bringing back three out of the four from the clutches of that madman and all the hell he had caused your family.”
Jonah glared at the newsman. “Ought’n been different, Nate. Ain’t no one left for me to blame now but myself.”
“That’s the cruelest blame of all, Jonah.”
His eyes came up, hooded and accusing, gazing at the newsman. “It’s for me to say who I’m gonna blame. And that’s the last we’re gonna speak of it.”
He understood Hook had just told him something important: declared something off-limits from here on out. Feeling chastised, Deidecker contented himself with watching the old man crack one of the doe’s thick leg bones on one of the rocks ringing the fire. Jonah then scraped out the marrow into the small kettle. It began to melt, sizzle, and spit as soon as the old man suspended the kettle over the fire from the iron tripod. Jonah dropped the chopped onions through his fingers into the warming marrow, then sat back and sighed, staring into the flames cradling the bottom of the kettle in yellow-tipped tongues of blue.
“Tell me about that woman in the picture then. She was Jeremiah’s wife?”
“Zeke’s. And those are my grandchildren. Got fourteen grandchildren now, between Jeremiah and Hattie.”
“Where did Hattie end up after going east to get her schooling?”
“Lots of stories there too, Nate.”
“I don’t want to push too hard again, Jonah.”
Hook chuckled softly. “She married her a wealthy man. S’pose nowadays they call that sort of man influential. He’s a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.”
“Time comes, you’ll tell me his name too?”
Hook wagged his head. “No. But you could go and find out—a fella like you could.”
Nate nodded. “I suppose I could, Jonah. Each state has only two senators.”
“Sort of narrows it down, don’t it, Nate? But you digging around for it won’t do the young fella no good—no good to see you write up his name in your paper, saying his father-in-law’s this high-plains desperado and his mother-in-law was this …” Hook stopped of a sudden, wiping the knife off on the front of his pants leg before he held it pointed at Deidecker across the fire. “Let’s just get this straight—I don’t wanna hear that Hattie and her husband and their young’uns ever get mentioned in your stories. We agreed on that, Nate?”
Deidecker glanced down at the knife blade glinting in the firelight. “You aren’t threatening me to keep it out of the story are you, Jonah?”
“No. I’m not threatening you. Never threatened a man in my life. All I’m doing is promising that if you say anything hurts that man, it’ll hurt my daughter. And, well—Nate. You know how I feel about folks what go and hurt my family.”
The newsman swallowed, not really sure how to read the look on the old man’s seamed face, the cold-
