Winter Rain

by Terry C. Johnston

  In a white-hot fury he swung the war club downward with all the force he could muster in that arm and shoulder. Tall One pushed against his enemy at that moment: instead of burying the three blades deep in the white man’s back, Antelope struck the shoulder blade, slicing down against the collarbone itself. Blood spurted into the air flecked with icy crystals as the weapon slid deeper still through layers of muscle and tendon.

  Still not deep enough.

  Tall One screamed again, putting up an arm as if to stop him as Antelope drew the club back for a second swinging blow. The one he hoped would be the killing strike. Finish off the enemy—

  His chest burned, like a rope of fire pulled taut to sear through it. Then feeling was gone in him. Not all, but most, as control fled his body on hawk’s wings and the club tumbled out of his hand, spilling into the sand. He went to his knees.

  He stared at the club, trying to reach out for it, helpless as he saw the blood splattered all over him. Not knowing in that moment if it was the white man’s, or his own. Another … then a third rope of fire burned through his chest.

  Antelope crumpled sideways to the sand. Alone. His eyes staring blindly at his older brother … not understanding why Tall One cradled the white man.

  The enemy.

  He died, blank-eyed, hoping he had killed the tai-bo, hoping he had dispatched his enemy’s soul to hell.

  There was little time for Jeremiah to react, hardly more time than it took him to holler out—throwing his arm up to try to fend off the war club, an instant to try pushing his father to the side when Antelope came careening off the slope of the arroyo, that weapon held high as it sailed downward in its arc of death.

  Jeremiah cried out again, watching the first bullet hit Antelope, jerking his body upward, blood splattering as the lead exited the chest in a crimson corona. His young brother wobbled to his knees, crouching there suspended over their father as the blood came coughing from Zeke’s mouth, dribbling from his nose as a second, then a third bullet smashed into his chest. Blood flung over Jeremiah as his brother crumpled to the side.

  How he yearned to go to gather Zeke into his arms as he cradled his father’s limp, bloody body. He could only kneel, clutching his father as in horror he watched his brother’s legs convulse, watched the red-stained fingers in that now empty hand twitch. Saw those dark eyes in the midst of that sand-caked war paint staring back at him.

  Blank and wide. Without expression.

  Jeremiah prayed that meant Zeke had died without pain.

  There was, after all, no pain he could see in his young brother’s eyes as Jeremiah rocked and rocked, and rocked his father, calling out for someone to come help him. Then realized he was screaming in Comanche.

  That was when Two Sleep had come over to kneel with Sergeant Coffee and June Callicott beside the warrior who had his bloodstained arms locked around Jonah Hook.

  Slowly, concentrating on how finally to say it after all these years of hearing the name, the Shoshone had asked, “Jeremiah?”

  And the Comanche had nodded. Then finally said in crude, stuttering English, “Jeremiah Hook … me.”

  Coffee and Callicott had gently rolled Jonah over before Two Sleep tore strips from his own cotton shirt to make bandages to lay on the gaping wounds: muscles torn asunder, lying purple and red against the whitish-purple of bone. Jonah’s breath whistled through his blood-flecked nose, and at the back of his throat he gurgled slightly.

  They had to tell Jonah about all that days later when he had the strength to listen in those rare times he came to and opened his glazed eyes. Two days after the fight, after burning and destroying the village, Colonel Davidson’s buffalo soldiers had pulled out for the east. Two more days and Captain Lockhart had started his own men south. Two Sleep helped John Corn and June Callicott craft the half-dozen travois they used to pull their wounded behind captured Comanche ponies.

  The Rangers buried their dead there in the middle of that small circle of frozen horseflesh.

  Jeremiah cleaned his brother’s body, then wrapped Ezekiel Hook in a blanket and buffalo robe he claimed from the lodges before the whole village was put to the torch by the buffalo soldiers.

  When at last it came time for the Rangers to go, Jeremiah had knelt over his father, gently awakening him before Lockhart started Company C south.

  “You bring Zeke along?” Jonah had asked that cloudy morning that promised an afternoon squall of sleet boiling on the horizon.

  Jeremiah had nodded. “Like you asked.”

  Now his son’s English had gotten better for all the practice over the past weeks as they followed Company C south by east toward Jacksboro and Fort Richardson. It was there that Jonah looked up after that awful, bouncing ride he suffered in the travois and beheld Captain Lamar Lockhart come back on foot, removing his hat. The Ranger chief stood above him a moment, as if that courageous man were of a sudden fiddle-footed and shy.

  “Time for you to head on home, I s’pose, Jonah Hook,” Lockhart had said.

  “S’pose I can. Least I found my boys.” His eyes had stung as he stretched the healing flesh to reach into his pocket, the only one he had, a pocket sewn in the greasy shirt over his heart. It was there the Rangers carried their badges.

  Jonah pulled out his six-pointed star and offered it to the sad-eyed captain. Lockhart took it reluctantly.

  “Won’t be needing it now,” Hook said, tiring from the talk already.

  “You keep it, Private,” Lockhart said, backing off a step and putting his hat back on his head while more of the company gathered in a crescent behind him. “Just want you to know, Jonah Hook—the Rangers will always be in need of men like you.”

  “By damn if that ain’t the Lord’s honest truth,” Deacon Johns added.

  When Lockhart saluted the man lashed to the travois, there was a rustle as the others of Company C did the same.

  “We wish you God’s speed as you take this long trail back home,” the deacon said, coming forward to squeeze Hook’s hand with his strong, veiny paw.

  “Going home only for as long as I can’t sit a horse, Deacon. Still got another out there I swore I’d find.”

  “May the good Lord watch over you and keep you in the palm of His hand,” Johns said, squeezing Hook’s hand again before he turned away to join Coffee, Callicott, Pettis, and the rest.

  “Don’t make yourself a stranger you ever come down into Texas again,” Lockhart said, his voice cracking, though it filled with cheer. “You ask for me—or Company C. Ain’t nothing you’ll ever want for in west Texas.”

  That had been painful, bouncing weeks ago. Watching Lamar Lockhart and his company of Rangers move off quietly. Good men he would remember for the rest of his days.

  Two Sleep had done most of the bartering for provisions. Jeremiah’s halting English still came hard those two days they hung close by at Richardson and Jacksboro before finally pushing north one dawn as the yellow light stirred up into the blue-gray of a late-winter sky. They were heading east by north for Missouri: two riders and five horses, a wounded man slung on one bouncing travois, along with a long, narrow bundle encased in a buffalo skin and bound by rawhide strips for its journey.

  Through those Indian nations granted reservations in the Territories, they finally crossed the Arkansas and into the thickly wooded hills that Jonah began to recognize as winter whimpered its last. He was able to ride that last week, able to stay in the saddle a few hours more every day, his left arm lashed tightly to his chest to keep that broken collarbone from moving, to keep the pain down across the shoulder blade. Doing what he could with the tightness of the muscles and his own damned hide, so tight it didn’t feel as if it were really his, more like he had tried on a suit of skin a size or two too small.

  But he figured it would fit, eventually—like a pair of tight boots, once he got a chance to work those muscles and that new skin a bit. The wounds hurt, more than anything had hurt him in his life as he put the muscles and tendons, sinew and skin to work a
t last in early April. Hard, hard work.

  The other two had pleaded with Jonah to let them help him as he resolutely drove the shovel into the old mound of dirt beside the first of the graves he swore he would fill.

  “She’s my sister, pa,” Jeremiah said ultimately, struggling until he found the words.

  Jonah saw his son’s eyes fill with pools, thinking that this must be just how his own young face must have looked of a time when he had asked a childlike Gritta Moser to be his wife and life companion, remembering how her acceptance had brought tears to his eyes.

  “All right, son. I’ll be pleased to have your help.”

  Jeremiah had taken their only shovel from Jonah’s hands and put his strong back into throwing the sod back into that dark, empty hole. He made short work of it, then straightened.

  “Next one … my hole?”

  “Yes,” Jonah answered softly. “Your grave. Fill it. I found you, Jeremiah. Fill it like you filled Hattie’s.”

  Without reply, the young man bent to the work and soon had the second of the graves nearly full as Two Sleep looked on. Without the benefit of body nor coffin, and the effect of years of rain and snow eating away the mounds of dirt Jonah had left beside those empty holes back of a cold January in sixty-seven, the first two graves appeared more to be slight depressions than mounded scars marking a person’s final resting place.

  Jeremiah came over to stand with his father beside the third hole. “This by mine hole—it for Zeke?”

  Jonah could only nod, clearing his throat. He turned to the Shoshone, who stood close, his own eyes glistening, his jaw motionless. “Two Sleep—you help Jeremiah ease his brother down in that hole?”

  Between the two of them they got Zeke lowered on ropes, then stood, waiting for Jonah as he stopped at the foot of the grave, when it started to snow. Hook knelt, scooped up some of the years-hardened soil, and tossed it in. Landing on the buffalo hide, the dirt made a dull but distinct noise there in the quiet of that late afternoon near the empty shell of the cabin the man had built for his woman and family years gone the way of time everlasting. Behind them among the hills the heavier snow crept down the slopes, falling softly without a sound but for the frosty breathing of those men and their animals near the private graveyard Jonah Hook had made of his private quest.

  “I’ll always carry this pain in my heart for you, Zeke. Found your sister. Found your brother. It hurts, goddammit—hurts knowing I was a little late finding you, son. That’s a pain I’ll end up carrying in my heart for the rest of my days. As much a pain as having to think that you never really knowed me as a father … you was so young when I walked off to fight a war.”

  The snow hit the shoulders of his canvas mackinaw with a soft hiss as Jonah stepped back and motioned with his free arm to the others. “A war I ain’t been able to come home from yet.”

  Without a word between them Jeremiah and Two Sleep took turns hurriedly scooping dirt into Ezekiel’s grave. When they were finished, it was the only one of the three holes crowned with a rounded top. Jeremiah’s and Hattie’s had been filled with dirt only.

  Yonder, on the far side of Hattie’s and right beneath the bare, skeletal, spreading arms of the elm, remained a single dark, gaping hole that stood out starkly against the new snow thinly blanketing the ground.

  Jonah was already kneeling at the side of that last empty grave when Two Sleep came up to stand across from him on the far side of the yawning hole. Jonah heard Jeremiah come up beside him. The young man knelt, laying an arm across his father’s wounded shoulder.

  Jonah gazed briefly at his son, eyes wet again. “I’m going back out there again, Jeremiah.”

  The youth nodded, able to keep his own eyes from spilling.

  “Me and Two Sleep going after your ma,” Jonah said, turning to look across that empty grave at the Shoshone with what his eyes made of an unspoken question.

  The warrior nodded, his dark, ropy hands folded in front of him here among the spirits in Jonah Hook’s own private burial ground.

  “I’m going with you, pa.”

  The words came so strong, so sure, no faltering as they were spoken, that Jonah took his eyes off the Shoshone to look back at the face of his son. “Don’t think I could take you, Jeremiah. Gonna be a dangerous trail I’m taking now.”

  “Look at you, pa. All stove up.”

  “I’ll heal.”

  “I know you will. Still, it don’t make no matter what you say.”

  “I’m your pa, Jeremiah.”

  He shook his head, his eyes brimming. “But I ain’t a little boy no more.”

  That stung him, then as quickly filled Jonah with pride. “I … I plainly see you ain’t no little boy no more.”

  Jeremiah reached out and folded his father into his arms. “But that don’t mean I ain’t your son no more. Nothing ever gonna change that. I know now that nothing ever could change that.”

  Refusing to believe what his heart told him, Hook started to choke out the words, “I ain’t so sure I should—”

  “She’ll always be my mother,” Jeremiah interrupted, turning to look down into the dark hole in the midst of all of that white swathing the ground. A wet, spring snow. “I owe her just as much to try as you do, pa.”

  His heart leapt, burning with his love for that youngster he hadn’t watched grow up. Burning with love for his son who had swiftly crossed all those years they had been apart by bridging that great gulf with his own love. For a moment Jonah wondered where Jeremiah could have ever learned that sort of love … then he knew, thinking suddenly on Gritta once more, here beside her empty grave.

  His voice cracked as he said, “You always did sort of favor your mother, son.”

  Jonah realized Jeremiah had gotten the best his mother had to give him. It was always that way with Gritta: giving everything to her man and their children.

  “I want to do this for you too, pa.” Jeremiah helped his father stand in the cold as the wind shifted, swinging out of the south.

  “You sure about this, son?”

  He nodded, straightening his strong back. “I ain’t really asking you, pa. I’m telling you what I’m going to do. With you … or without you: I’m going after my mother.”

  Jonah brought the young man into his arms and hugged him fiercely. Holding him like he had never held Jeremiah before. As a man.

  “Son, let’s go find your mother.”

  And as they turned from that open black hole, so like the empty place torn through the middle of Jonah’s heart, the snow became a cold rain.

  A slow, tearful, winter rain.

  Epilogue

  Late summer 1908

  NATE DEIDECKER DARED not admit it, but he was relieved to know that Jonah Hook would be getting him back to the cabin tomorrow afternoon.

  Still, with all his fears, this horseback ride into the splendid serenity of the Big Horns had been one of the singular events in the life of the young newsman. Something he vowed he would tell his grandchildren about when they gathered at his knee. Funny to think on that now, for there had been times in the past three days Nate had entertained serious doubts of ever living long enough to father any children, much less come to enjoy his grandchildren.

  What stories he would regale them with, sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters all—tales to make them cringe, tales that would make their hair stand on end, make their eyes grow wide and their mouths O in surprise. These true tales of Jonah Hook.

  The sun was glorious beyond belief falling into the west beyond their camp that night on the western slope of the mountains. Out there beyond, yonder in Teddy Roosevelt’s Yellowstone Park, it seemed to be settling, as here the light bled away to magnificent stillness. How the air of these evenings hummed with a radiant alpenglow, cooling quickly as the old frontiersman puttered about the camp he made them that night. Having started the fire and left Deidecker to tend it, Hook had proceeded to erect the newsman’s small dog tent, unfurling in it Deidecker’s canvas bedroll wrapped ar
ound its wool blankets. Then Jonah had unpacked the cast-iron skillet and small kettle, along with that monster of a battered pot capable of making a gallon of coffee. From a nearby freshet running through the meadow Hook had drawn them water, then set the blackened vessel on the flames to boil.

  The haunch of a young doe Jonah had shot at mid-morning was sliced, and two thick slabs of the bloody meat now covered the bottom of the old man’s skillet, ready for frying when the time came. The singular, invigorating smell to the air of these mountain evenings made Nate all the hungrier. If Jonah hadn’t protected the loin steaks, Deidecker might well have tried to raise a slice or two and wolf it down raw.

  In the past three days of travel through this wilderness he had come to understand why the plainsmen said 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 Omaha Bee.

  “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.”