Flight of the Hawk: The Plains

by W. Michael Gear

  How to atone? Easy. Kill McKeever. Send his black soul to hell.

  But how did Dawson find him? Where did he even begin to look?

  “Give me a sign, Lord. Please. Just a simple direction.”

  He stared up into the swirling steam, trying to scry a pattern from the bending and twisting streamers.

  But nothing formed, no holy cross in the sky, no voice whispering down from above.

  The only sound was the distant mocking call of a raven flapping over the river.

  Eventually, God would have to answer.

  “McKeever will kill you,” Tylor had said, and with the conviction of a man who knew of what he spoke.

  Didn’t matter. So far as Dawson McTavish was concerned, he was already dead.

  In the swirling mist, Joseph’s face formed, his eyes blazing with betrayal. As it slowly faded, a scream sounded in Dawson’s head and slowly echoed into a consuming darkness.

  Dawson clamped his eyes shut, pressed his hands over his ears, as if that would block that horrible scream.

  Just as he had done from the moment McKeever had walked into camp, he was deluding himself. Deep down he understood that if he ever found McKeever, the man would kill him. Mc-Keever would fix him with those cold green eyes, and Dawson’s heart would stop. His muscles would freeze, and the fear would rise to seize his heart.

  An ordinary man can’t kill the Devil.

  Joseph’s face reformed in the patterns of mist, haunting, terrified. Dawson reached up into the rising steam, tried to grasp the image. His fingers closed on nothingness.

  Sometimes atonement lay forever beyond a man’s grasp.

  And when it was?

  I have lost it all.

  Rising from the water, the cold air sent a prickling tingle along his skin.

  Sloshing out of the hot spring, Dawson walked over to his clothes and kit. His fingers tried to stick to the cold metal of the lock work as he lifted his Bond rifle.

  Staring up into the steam Joseph’s face wavered in the mist.

  “My fault,” he whispered. “All my fault.”

  The cock clicked under his thumb.

  CHAPTER 48

  Moon Walker splashed across the rocky ford where the Pia’ogwe ran across bedrock. The river—dotted with clear sheets of floating ice—was shallow here, running fast across the rock. This was one of the few easy fords this side of where the channel emerged from the Owl Creek Mountains. There not even a trail followed the river’s sheer banks as it churned, thrashed, and cut its way through the narrow and precipitous gorge.

  Reaching the far shore, Gray Bear looked back, seeing the gentle slope of the mountains as they rose to the southern horizon. Around him, a series of red sandstone hogbacks lifted at an angle, the country faulted, broken, and topped by gray travertine that merged with the snow. He led the way, urging Moon Walker up the bank, through the willows, and around the boles of cottonwoods before breaking out on the sage flats. A couple of bowshots to the east, a sandstone ridge covered with juniper hunched like one of the Beginning Time giants.

  Behind him Cunningham and Silver Curl rode their wet horses up onto the floodplain, and last of all came the hawk, riding imperiously atop its packsaddle.

  The bird stared around with a piercing gaze, as though disdainful of this new country to begin with and irritated that it was packed up on a horse and forced into such an inconvenient journey.

  Turning Moon Walker, Gray Bear followed the bank, letting the horse pick its way through the stirrup-high sagebrush. Immediately ahead, thick palls of white steam rose at the base of a round-topped knoll, then flattened as they hit the cold air cap where it hung low in the bottoms. Streams of steaming water feathered out from the springs to flow over stone and trickle down steep travertine bluffs and into the ice-dotted river.

  The first signs of horse tracks were paired with places the grass had been grazed off.

  Gray Bear reined Moon Walker to the right, seeing where a shelter had been built on the terrace; the location was tucked back against the red sandstone and protected from the north and west wind. The camp had a southern exposure; the snow melted away despite the temperature.

  Their arrival wasn’t a total surprise. John Tylor stood on one of the sandstone boulders that had tumbled down the slope. His ugly rifle was cradled in the crook of his left arm, his right raised in a wave.

  Not that Gray Bear could have recognized the man from his clothing. The beard, brown and full, gave him away. As had the horses.

  Gray Bear pulled up at the foot of the slope and stepped off Moon Walker. He took only long enough to hobble Moon Walker’s front feet, then stepped back and lifted the hawk from the packsaddle, careful to ensure the bird’s talons didn’t shred his hand.

  Cunningham had already climbed up to the camp and was slapping Tylor on the back, howling a greeting, as the two of them cavorted and danced around. Silver Curl stood to one side, watching curiously.

  Gray Bear picked his way carefully up the trail. Be a disaster if he slipped on the ice and fell. The hawk would use the opportunity to rip his face, arms, and hands to ribbons. He’d learned quickly that the bird didn’t take to upsets and had no sense of humor.

  Tylor disengaged from Cunningham, a smile beaming from behind his bearded lips. “Gray Bear, hello, my old friend.”

  “Tylor, we’ve been worried about you. I brought you your hawk. We’re all tired of working for it. The bird thinks humans were born just to feed it. Screams like a water baby in a fire if it’s not fed on time.”

  Gray Bear carefully shifted the bird to Tylor’s saddle where it rested to one side under a screen of interwoven sagebrush. The bird immediately fluffed its feathers, raised its tail, and squirted a white smear down the side of the saddlebow.

  Tylor made a face, then sighed. “How’d you find us? Where are the rest of the people?”

  “Five Strikes. He was scouting on the other side of the river. Heard a gunshot late yesterday. When he rode over to check, he saw your horses. Came to tell us. We’re camped at the Ainga’honobita ogwebe springs. Just over that way.” He indicated with a lifting of his chin to the southwest.

  Tylor took a deep breath. “That gunshot.” He shook his head. “Sad story there. Young Canadian man. Shot himself. Lark and I buried him up on a ridge overlooking the river. Worked for Robert Dickson. Seems he got tangled up with Fenway Mc-Keever.”

  “McKeever?” Cunningham said with a snort. “Thought that coon had done gone under.”

  “Oh, he survived drowning in the Missouri. Found a party of Dickson’s agents, two young men and a couple of Santee Sioux sent to beguile the Tetons into turning against Lisa. McKeever bullied them into chasing me. Along the way they picked up some of the Sa’idika we tangled with back above the Grand River. Caught up with Singing Lark and me in Spirit Pass.” He paused. “It’s a long story. McKeever got away.”

  “He around here?” Cunningham asked.

  “Last we knew, he was headed south into the Powder River Basin with two horses and a rich pack of trade goods. That was into the teeth of the blizzard. He might be frozen for all we know.”

  “Let’s hope,” Cunningham muttered, eyes narrowing.

  Tylor said, “You should also know this. There’s a party of Blackfeet south of the Owl Creeks. Or were, last time we saw them.”

  “Not anymore,” Gray Bear told him. “They followed us from the Pretty River. It’s a long story. Three of them got away.”

  Cunningham said, “Prettiest thing you ever seen. Gray Bear laid an ambush. They rode right into the fusillade.”

  Tylor glanced at Silver Curl, asking in English, “And who might you be?”

  “Silver Curl,” Cunningham told him. “I just bought her. We’re figuring out if we like each other.” Cunningham fingered something—a little leather pouch hung from a cord around his neck.

  “Auburn hair, white skin, light brown eyes? I thought for a moment she was white.” Tylor glanced at Cunningham. “Bought?”

&nb
sp; “Spanish. Stolen from down New Mexico way.”

  “Buenas dias, señorita. Me llamo John Tylor.”

  Silver Curl gave Tylor a stunned look. “Mucho gusto, señor. Muchos años han pasado casi hablar en Español.”

  Gray Bear and Cunningham listened incredulously as the two prattled on in Spanish.

  After a pause, Tylor cocked a brow and glanced at Cunningham. “She says you’ve got a chance, that you’re the handsomest man she’s seen since she was stolen away by the Comanche.”

  Cunningham grinned, then fingered the pouch again.

  And it hit Gray Bear as to what it was: love charm. Aspen Branch was richer by a string of beads. He’d only been kidding when he told Cunningham no woman would have him.

  But then, looking at Silver Curl, maybe the charm was working.

  Singing Lark, rifle in hand, appeared from around the edge of the bluff, stopped short, and charged forward.

  The laughter, the wide grin, reminded Gray Bear that she wasn’t much more than a girl. Especially as she laid her rifle down and leaped into his arms, hugging him fiercely. “My heart bursts with joy! Taikwahni! I have missed you so!”

  “We have worried about you. Hoped that you had not been caught by the Pa’kiani. Seeing you brings tears of joy to my eyes.” He pushed her back. “And look at you! I would swear you are a hand taller. Perhaps the most beautiful woman I have seen.”

  She beamed at him in response. “I am free.”

  “Thought you were married to the Taipo? What? Has he thrown you away?”

  “Still married,” she told him happily. “It is a trial. Tylor takes constant care. He doesn’t know the simplest things. Constantly getting into trouble. Just the other night I had to rescue him from a bunch of Sa’idika, a Sioux, and a couple of Taipo.”

  “You did?”

  Tylor said, “She may be the most remarkable woman alive.”

  “And how did you do this?” Gray Bear asked.

  “By walking very softly and shooting very straight. It was luck that I was out of camp when they came on us. I should have seen them. Would have but for the storm.”

  “I am so relieved that you are well,” Gray Bear gave her another hug. “But please, do not hold this over the women’s heads. Don’t brag and make them crazy.”

  She looked up into his eyes, her own sparkling. “There is only one man who could ask such a thing from me.”

  “Tylor? Will you ask your wife not to cause trouble?”

  Tylor said, “Lark, the chief would like it if—”

  “Him?” Lark cried. “He’s just my husband. You’re my taikwahni. So, yes, because you ask, in this one instance, I shall control myself and not go about bragging in front of the women.”

  Tylor lifted his hands in mock defeat.

  “Looks like we all dodged the bullet,” Cunningham noted. “Reckon we got a whole winter t’ get our trade together, Tylor. Come spring, we need to haul a couple of packs of fur to the mouth of the Big Horn and meet up with Reubin Lewis at Lisa’s post. He’s supposed to have rebuilt Fort Raymond.”

  “You’ve still got those traps Lisa advanced us?”

  “Yep. And the weather’s cold enough the fur should be prime.”

  “Maybe McKeever’s finally had enough. Hell, alone, in the middle of the winter, and riding around with a pack of trade, he’ll be lucky to keep his hair even if the cold doesn’t kill him. If we stick to the mountains, keep our heads down, the world will finally forget that I exist.”

  The hawk screamed, fixing its glaring eyes on Tylor.

  Would the bird ever fly again? Gray Bear wondered. Lifting his eyes, he looked up at where the thick column of steam rose against the cold winter sky. The puhagans said they saw images from the underworld when they studied the patterns in the rising steam, that sometimes they could see the future.

  But as Gray Bear studied the patterns, he could see nothing. The future would have to wait for another day.

  CHAPTER 49

  The fact that they’d found shelter was a miracle. That, or Toby was getting good enough at knowing the plains that he’d begun to develop a sense for the weather. That nice warm day had left him slightly nervous, caused him to stop early where a mustard-yellow sandstone outcropped above the cottonwood-thick floodplain above the Platte.

  To the south, grass-covered terraces were set back from the river before giving way to long slopes that led up to the mass of the great black mountain. It lay east-west, rising to block the southern horizon. The channel of the Platte had bent to the south, cutting close to the western base of the mountain. There, irregular red sandstone bluffs rose from the river’s northern shore, impeding further travel.

  He had delegated Silas to wood detail while he and Eli Danford cared for the horses, built a shelter, and stowed the packs.

  That night the storm had roared down from the north, and Toby and his little command had been as snug as could be with a crackling fire and dry bedding.

  “Never known nothing like this,” Simms had blurted, his blanket pulled tightly around his shoulders as he hunched under the canvas shelter they’d made of the pack manties.

  Overhead the wind had howled, blowing snow in blinding veils that had obscured the cottonwoods no more than fifty yards away. On their pickets, the horses had stood head down, tails flagged as snow packed their rumps. A fine filtering of powder white was constantly sifting down through any gap.

  “We’d a froze out in an open camp,” Danford agreed. He had shot Toby a look. “What kind of country you brought us to?”

  “Well, we found the black mountain,” Toby told him with a grin. “If Tylor’s out here, this has got to be the country he come to.”

  But the problem had gnawed at him. As they’d traveled up the North Platte, the country had grown wilder, rougher, sometimes causing them to circle wide around canyons and broken hills where the river ran fast and white.

  Then had come the great black mountain, and now here, where the Platte again entered a narrow chasm. What should he do? Keep following the river? Head out across the plains? And if he did, in which direction? Assuming Tylor was still alive, where, in all this open country, did he find the man? How did they do it and avoid detection? What happened if they were discovered by Indians?

  Three days ago, they’d seen a large party of mounted Indians. Some thirty riders carrying shields, bows and arrows, and some lances. Again, Toby’s instinct was to hide first, take chances later. Just as well, they’d barely avoided a large village of tipis set back from the south bank of the Platte. Maybe a half-milelong stretch of lodges, smoke rising from the tops. To be safe, Toby had detoured them north a half-day’s ride.

  How did a corporal with two privates tell who was who out here? Arapahos? Sioux? Cheyenne? Snakes?

  “Think we can get ’em to carry flags? Maybe wear uniforms like the lobsterback British?” Danford had wondered wistfully.

  “Poor planning on someone’s part,” Simms had muttered in reply. Then he’d grinned. “Bet ya’ll there’s money to be made when we get back. Bet they’s a newspaper, or one of them writers who’d pay us for the story. We can be famous. Think of the tale we can tell. Into the wilderness and back, and us bringing in a bloodthirsty and terrible traitor just afore he brung the savage heathen hordes down on America.”

  “I ain’t seen no savage heathen hordes,” Danford had muttered. “Lessen that village we passed is one.”

  Toby, as befitted an officer, had let them talk.

  That was the thing about being an officer. He was the one who had to come up with the answers, and as the storm raged, he wasn’t coming up with many. Danford and Simms just figured all they had to do was follow orders. That either it worked out that they found Tylor, or it didn’t. Either way, it wasn’t their concern. They were both in it for the adventure. Having the time of their lives, going where—as they figured—no white man had ever gone before. If that meant the occasional cold camp, gaunt belly, or discomfort, why, that was just part of the chall
enge.

  They hadn’t made the promise to General Jackson. That had been Toby’s doing.

  Sometimes, being an officer was an all-fired complication.

  The third day the storm finally broke. The sky dawning clear, the air felt glass-sharp cold and froze the nostrils. The kind that bit at any exposed flesh. Condensation puffed in white clouds with each breath the horses exhaled while they pawed at the snow for grass.

  Most of the firewood was burned, Danford having made a few forays to augment the supply as the wind had exhausted its strength the night before.

  A thin column of smoke rose from the fire, threading up past the sandstone overhang to vanish into the remarkable blue.

  “How cold you all reckon this to be?” Simms asked.

  Toby—a section of blanket wrapped around his mouth, a strip of rag tying his hat brim down over his ears—muttered, “Well, there’s cold. Bitter cold. Damn cold. Bitter damn cold. And finally there’s really bitter damn cold. I think we’re closing in on that last one.”

  “What do you want to do today?” Simms asked, his eyebrows frosted. He was a curious bundle of blanket-wrapped oddity, looking more like a cocoon than a soldier.

  “Not sure,” Toby told him. “I’m betting we can swing north of these buttes, circle around, and hit the river again like we done downstream. But it worries me about what happens if we’re out in the open and the wind whips up. Might freeze us and the horses.”

  “Heard tell of that back in Tennessee,” Danford said, his head hidden by a peculiar deer-hide hat he’d fashioned for himself. He wore the God-awful creation hair-side in. The rawhide had hardened, sort of like a helmet. Both Silas and Toby had made fun of the thing, but about now it was looking remarkably warm. “Pap knew a man what froze his feet off in the mountains up Pigeon Creek way.”

  “Might be best to stick to camp here.” Simms clasped his arms tighter around his blanket-wrapped chest and fought a shiver. “We got wood, Toby. The horses ain’t shy on graze. This cold’s gotta break sometime soon.”