“You say so when we are done, Hook,” the Shoshone replied. “When we go back to go on get your family.”
He sighed, gazing up at the spinning sky overhead, stars clear as dewdrops on corn silk of an early summer morning, the whole shiny glitter of them seeming almost close enough for him to reach out and knock those droplets off with a flick of his fingers. Not knowing why he couldn’t reach that far.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know,” Two Sleep replied. “I do it with you.”
“That’s just it. Can’t figure out why you’d want to walk in there with me—when the odds are agin us.”
The Shoshone looked over at the white man riding beside him. “Odds better when I come, no?”
“This bunch is likely good at killing, Two Sleep. They didn’t get into Usher’s group—they didn’t stay alive in that bastard’s outfit less’n they were awful good with guns.”
“This Usher you tell me—he send the best back for you, yes?”
Jonah nodded. “I suppose he would. His best. Do it clean and quick.”
It was the warrior’s time to sigh and contemplate. “Then—you … me. We do much more to be better.”
After he had patted the Shoshone’s arm reassuringly, Jonah gazed a moment at the aging warrior in the pale starlight. “It still doesn’t tell me why you come along. This ain’t your fight. Not riding on with me to the land of the Mormons neither. Can’t make sense of why you just don’t ride off down that road where you was heading when you bumped into me.”
“Told you. Like your whiskey. Like your company.”
“Don’t have any more whiskey, goddammit. You seen to that.”
Two Sleep nodded, pursed his lips. “So all I got is a friend to ride with, yes?”
“No. It’s gotta be more than that. More reason for you to pick this same bloody road as I picked for myself. Some good goddamned reason to put your life down for me. Why? Why you doing this for me?”
“Not for you,” he answered abruptly. “This trail is for me.”
“You? How—”
“Last chance for me, Hook.”
Jonah wagged his head, failing to make sense of any of it. Yet. “What the hell for—”
“I lost my woman. Lost children too,” the Shoshone admitted.
“White men? Like these bastards?”
“No,” he answered. “Got my own devils, Hook. You got yours.”
“Who then? Who took ’em? You know ’em?”
“I know. Lakota.”
“The Sioux?”
“Brule. Burnt Thigh. Bunch under Pawnee Killer.”
“Happened not long ago, I’d suppose.”
“No. Long time. Fourteen winters now. They gone a long time.”
“They? The Lakota come in and took your family?”
“Them didn’t die. Woman. She tall and pretty. My daughter too. Twelve summers old then. Both taken.”
“Other children?”
“Three boys. All fighting age.” He bent his head, staring at his lap.
Studying the way the Shoshone held his impassive face surrounding those liquid eyes, Hook realized the man was still mourning. Even after all this time. Fourteen years, going on fifteen.
“What happened to them? Your boys? The three of ’em.”
Still bent over in prayerful repose, Two Sleep drew a single index finger nearly the circumference of his neck, then used that finger to draw a circle around his head, ending his wordless description by yanking on his own greasy topknot.
“Goddle-mighty,” Jonah exclaimed quietly. “Them Brule killed ’em all—all three of ’em?”
Two Sleep held up both his hands, palms up in a plaintive gesture. “All gone. Sons gone on Star Road now. I put them in the trees. Above the ground. Where the wind talk to them for all time.”
Hook found himself instinctively gazing up at the night sky paling as the moon fell far in the west. He swallowed hard, brooding on the loss of his own sons. Lord—the two of them took at once. From what Shad Sweete had told him, they was as good as gone now: in the hands of comancheros, spirited all the way south to Mex country. Death’d likely be a better fate than that, he figured. And what of Gritta? Her fate no better than that of …
Jonah forced himself to squeeze that off, like stopping the stream of warm, creamy milk from the cow’s udder back home, and looked over at the Shoshone instead.
“The Brule, they’d be cruel to your … your woman. And your daughter?”
“Yes,” he answered immediately. “No,” he replied a moment later. “After all time gone from land of the Shoshone—the two now Lakota. My woman, she get old.” Then he made a cradling motion down at his belly. “Maybe she carry many Brule baby. Make many Lakota warrior.”
Jonah watched as the Shoshone was seized with a spasm of grief, something sour in his throat that was as quickly swallowed down.
“My girl,” Two Sleep continued, his words with a rocky edge to them as he spoke, “she have Brule babies too now.”
“You don’t know … can’t be sure.”
He nodded his head so emphatically, it shocked Hook.
“I know. The Lakota take women—make them Brule. Make Lakota warriors in their bellies. Marry and have many babies. Or … or the women they kill quick.”
“Your … the women—would they fight the Brule? Or would they have the Lakota babies?”
Two Sleep rubbed his eyes with his gnarled knuckles, as if some sandy grit were troubling them. “They gone,” he said finally, brushing one palm quickly across the other.
“Dead?”
“Dead,” the warrior answered.
“You mean: they’re good as dead.”
“They have babies for Lakota fathers,” Two Sleep agreed, “a bad thing for Shoshone woman.”
As good as dead, Jonah thought to himself. A woman of one tribe forced to give birth to sons of an enemy tribe—she was as good as dead to her own people.
“She wait. They wait for me,” Two Sleep continued after a moment. “Wait for first winter. A second and a third winter. They see no one riding to come for them. Maybe they dead now. Maybe after all winters they say Two Sleep not come for them—they carry Lakota babies. They come to be Lakota mothers. They not Shoshone no more. They be Lakota now. They forget Two Sleep.”
“But you never forgot them.”
Two Sleep dragged a hand beneath his nose hurriedly. “I never go find them. Afraid. No man go with me. I was young, strong in seasons ago. Not now. Too many winters gone. Other warriors give up oh Two Sleep. So now I afraid to go.”
Hook watched the Shoshone slowly drop his head on his forearms that lay cradled across his knees, hiding his face. There arose no sound from the warrior. Nothing to betray him but the slight, silent tremble as Two Sleep shuddered with the wracking sobs.
It grew clear to Jonah as he reached out, knowing nothing else to do but to touch the man’s quaking shoulder.
“After I told you my story … you up and decided you’re coming with me—’cause you want to help me get my family back. That it, Two Sleep?”
He raised his face, eyes glistening, but cheeks still dry as the flaky soil in this high land. “I come to help you. Too late to help me. Too late to help my woman. Help my daughter. Too late now help my sons gone far on the Star Road fourteen winters. But … still time for you, Hook.”
“Yes, Two Sleep. There is time for me.” He barely got the words out, choking on the unfamiliar taste of sentiment. It was something he had not often savored in his brooding past. But here, with this old Indian, in the cold of this autumn night somewhere near the windswept continental divide as they waited to pit themselves against six gunmen, Jonah Hook felt again that unaccustomed warmth of human kindness.
