So it was that this towering, muscular warrior became Woquini, or Hook Nose, to his own people. Above all, the most powerful war chief of the Northern Cheyenne.
Up and down the length of the hills overlooking the soldier fort on the south side of the river, Roman Nose passed by small groups of warriors, Lakota and Shahiyena both, sitting and talking, smoking their pipes and eating jerked meat, discussing the fight of yesterday when they had killed the soldier chief on the gray horse, perhaps talking of driving the soldiers back into the timber walls earlier today.
Warriors waving blankets on top of their lookout posts to the west caught his attention. More soldiers coming. Wagons.
This time the Shahiyena would show the Lakota how to kill all the white men. Roman Nose was still angry about the fighting yesterday. The Lakota had allowed too many soldiers to escape back across the bridge. Only eight scalps taken. It was not enough to pay for the horror suffered by Black Kettle’s people on the Little Dried River.
The white man’s bridge would have to run red with blood before Roman Nose had avenged the deaths of the many in that cold winter camp stinking with butchery.
By the time the Cheyenne war chief arrived at the scene, he found his warriors had already forced the five white-topped wagons to halt in the sandy bottom of a shallow ravine. The white men had circled the wagons in a crude oval, freeing the mules from their hitches about the time a hundred Lakota under Crazy Horse rode down on them.
It made Roman Nose laugh to watch the frightened white men release their mules and go bounding back across the sand to the shelter of the wagons. Some of the Lakota drove the mules off to camp while others chased after five horsemen who raced for the soldier fort.
On the hillside above the timbered ravine, Roman Nose dismounted, spread his small blanket and took out his short medicine pipe. Filling the bowl with tobacco taken in the raids of last winter, he smoked, watching his warriors begin firing at the soldiers and civilians trapped in the circle of their wagons. Time enough to watch and enjoy.
But the white men poked loopholes through the sides of the wagons, and killed a few of the more daring warriors who attempted to ride close enough to hit a soldier or count coup.
So as the afternoon dragged on, and the sun grew hotter, like a white eye in the sky that seemed to be scolding him, Roman Nose grew restive, watching the lack of progress while the Cheyenne dead mounted.
Knocking out the burnt tobacco into his palm, the war chief tossed four pinches into the winds, another toward the sky, and one dropped on the earth. A last pinch he smeared across his forehead before he tied on a special headdress made for him by a feather shaman named Ice.
It was time the powerful medicine of Roman Nose ended this fight with the handful of white men burrowed in their wagon corral.
Riding slowly down the slope, he called his main lieutenants to his side and told them his plan. They left to order others to crawl in close and keep the soldiers occupied and hunkered down behind cover while Roman Nose himself prepared the grand charge.
When all was in ready, the war chief shouted his signal. The snipers who had crawled close to the wagons opened up a deadly barrage with their white-man guns taken last winter along the Platte and yesterday at the bridge. The Shahiyena had many more rifles than did the Lakota of Young Man Afraid of His Horses.
Then Roman Nose turned atop his pony, waving both his arms for the charge to begin. The others raced behind him, like swallows following a hawk. As they neared the snipers, the Shahiyena riflemen ceased firing.
With the quickness of a striking snake, the red horsemen were among the wagons in a slashing, noisy blow, leaping over wagon tongues, shooting down at the white men who hid behind saddles and barrels and kegs. Without their chief saying a word, the warriors leapt from their ponies at a dead run, clubs or tomahawks in their hands, killing those who rose to fight to the last. Hacking at the wounded who could no longer raise themselves in defense.
In a matter of six heartbeats—their fury was spent.
With a wild screech from his powerful chest, Roman Nose announced to the white men in the fort and to the Lakota in the hills that he had been victorious. While some of his warriors stripped, scalped, and mutilated the dead soldiers, he ordered others to plunder the goods in the wagons, then set fire to the wagons themselves once everything they could carry on their ponies had been carried off into the hills north of the river.
Along with fourteen more rifles taken from the bloody, frozen clutches of their white victims.
The following afternoon Shad Sweete and two Shoshoni half-breeds led some reinforcements back to the Platte Bridge from Deer Creek Station. It had been quite a ride.
After the Cheyenne had swarmed over Sergeant Custard’s wagon train, Major Anderson called for volunteers to carry a message eighteen miles east to the soldiers stationed at Deer Creek. Anderson selected three men, paying them fifty dollars each for their dangerous ride. Under cover of darkness the three slipped out separately and took different routes down the North Platte.
Anderson needed men badly: he had nine men seriously wounded, and twenty-five had been killed.
Among the mutilated dead retrieved at the far side of the river from the previous day’s fierce fighting, a note was found attached to one of the bodies—more like a scrap of paper torn from a soldier’s personal diary. Word of that note spread quickly among the men of Platte Bridge Station, most choosing to believe that it was in fact written by a former Confederate serving with the Eleventh Ohio for the past year.
“It says he was captured down on the Platte some time back,” Jonah Hook said.
“Note don’t say a damn thing about a he,” Shad grumbled.
“It says the Injuns don’t want peace, and they’re expecting another thousand warriors to join up to fight us. And you don’t believe it was writ by the soldier?”
Sweete shook his head, then whispered. “The Injuns don’t keep a soldier alive, Jonah. That’s pure addle-headed thinking.”
“If it ain’t a soldier, who then?”
“A woman.”
“Woman?”
“Lot’s of ’em got took in those raids down on the South Platte. What I saw of it—”
“You seen the note?”
“Anderson wanted me to look at it,” Shad admitted. “It don’t look like the hand of a man. More like a scared woman’s hand wrote that note.”
“Damn their black hearts!” Hook cursed not quite under his breath, his chest heaving. “Nothing more evil than these savages dragging off women and children into the wilderness—for God knows what outrage.”
“Injuns ain’t the only ones. White or red—we all done our share of evil to one another out here across this big land.”
Sweete found Hook staring at him, eyes narrowing.
“Old man—it sounds to me like it don’t bother you to think of that woman being alone with all them savages—raping her.”
“It bothers me, Jonah!” he snapped. “But, goddammit—I’m telling you the Sioux and Cheyenne ain’t the only sonsabitches out here. Evil bastards come wearing all color of skin. I saw for myself how Colorado Volunteers showed off the private parts of Cheyenne women they killed and raped and cut up down on the Little Dried River.”
“You seen that with your own eyes?”
“Several fellas held up them privates for show at a opera house in Denver City last winter.”
Jonah’s mouth worked a moment, trying to form some words.
“I pray my woman and child are safe down in Indian Territory right now, where no soldier going to touch ’em, Jonah.”
Hook swallowed hard.
“Lord, Shad—it’s like all this is a big hole gets opened up in me, and I can’t fill it or close it no way I try. Lord watch over me, but how I wish I was home with Gritta and the young’uns. Home.”
Shad turned away to stare at the sky when he saw the tear tumble down the young soldier’s dirty cheek.
The next day, after Sweete and th
e Shoshoni had delivered their urgent dispatch and the hostiles had apparently cleared out, Captain Lybe led his detail of Third U.S. Volunteers on down the Laramie Road. They had pushed several miles east of Deer Creek Station when Shad spotted a cloud of dust ahead of them.
“Indians?” Lybe inquired.
“Don’t think so. Leastways, not down there. Don’t make sense—them bringing a big camp with women and children this close to Laramie. Sioux and Cheyenne like to fight the soldiers off and away from the fort.”
The captain wiped the back of his hand across his cracked, rosy lips. “Go see for yourself, Sweete.”
Shad came back a half hour later to find Lybe’s men sitting in what shade they could steal among the alder and cottonwood, escaping the late July sun.
“Soldiers, Captain,” Sweete announced as he rode in among the anxious soldiers.
“Thank God,” Lybe said.
“Thank General Connor and Jim Bridger,” Shad replied.
“Connor?”
“Bridger’s leading him this way.”
“How many troops?”
“A shitload.”
“Bet he’s coming this way, loaded for bear. For certain he’s heard of the attack on Platte Bridge Station.”
General Patrick E. Connor was indeed marching upriver to bolster what forces he had left along the upper North Platte. There was some considerable cheering when the general ordered his troops into a short halt there with Lybe’s men bound for Laramie.
“Going in for supplies, General. And the men haven’t been paid since they were assigned posts in May.”
“You’ve got reason to celebrate then, Captain Lybe,” said Connor as he knocked dust from his blue tunic with his gauntlets.
“Getting out of that scrap against the hostiles with our hair?”
“Perhaps that,” Connor said as Sweete and Bridger walked up to the soldiers. “Perhaps because the war’s over.”
“War’s over, General?”
Connor was smiling. More soldiers surged around him suddenly. The troops with the general from Laramie were joyously informing the upriver boys of the news as well.
“Lee surrendered to Grant in Virginia.”
“Lee surrendered?” Jonah Hook croaked, unable to believe it.
“War’s over, son!” Shad Sweete pounded the Confederate on the shoulder. “You’ll be going home soon.”
“Soon as I get mustered out,” Hook said, his eyes moist and his voice colicky with emotion, “that’s where I’m heading, straight off. Home.”
Her eyes smarted with the stinging sweat.
Gritta Hook stopped her hoeing and took the tattered bandanna she wore around her neck to swipe across her forehead, leaning against the hoe handle.
“You go get us another bucket of water from the well, Zeke,” she said to her youngest, six and a half years old now, and more help in these fields with every week.
Without a word he pitched his hoe aside and went galloping past the other two children, Jeremiah and Hattie. It was hard enough raising these three on her own without Jonah, but with the added burden of working the fields behind the mules twice a year, clearing the irrigation sluices, and chopping the wood all added to what she had done before Jonah took off to ride with General Price to keep the Yankees out of Missouri—some days she just ran off to the cool cellar her husband had dug down by the spring and there she cried where no one would hear her.
And it always made her feel better, stronger, able to walk back up the slope to the cabin once more and face her three children and what she had to do alone to hold this family together. More and more during the hard seasons like this, Gritta found herself falling asleep at night as her head hit the feather pillow, her arm by rote going over to Jonah’s side of the rope-and-tick-mattress bed. Dropping immediately into sleep before she could even whisper her prayer for Jonah—and for herself and the children.
But standing here beneath the hot sun of late July, Gritta prayed, for the strength to remain in her thin body until her man came marching home. The war had been over a few months and she dared not think about him never coming home—just pushed that thought out of her mind the way she had learned to shove and muscle the mules around in the corral, or shoulder over the milk cow when the old girl did not particularly want to give up on a morning.
No, she had decided Jonah was still alive, and he would come walking down that road one of these days before the fall colors came to these hardwood hills that reminded her more and more of back home to Virginia. Besides, weren’t but a few of the others who had marched off to war had already come walking back home yet. She wasn’t the only woman in this narrow holler with a man gone and children to raise and crops to tend.
“Mama!”
She turned at the sound of little Zeke’s call, finding him shuffling her way with the bucket. Jeremiah and Hattie were coming toward her as well, dragging their hoes, looking beyond her and off in the direction where Zeke kept turning, and pointing.
Old Seth, the rangy, ribby blue-tick hound they had brought with them years ago from Virginia set to barking and howling, as if pricked by some faraway danger.
Gritta sensed the cold prickle of fear slide down her spine in a single droplet of sweat cascading beneath the layers of her cotton clothing that gusted with a sudden hot wind forcing the bonnet ribbon hung loosely around her neck nearly to strangle her.
“Someone coming, Mama,” eight-year-old Jeremiah said as he came to a stop beside her. “You want me go and fetch the gun?”
She thought on it, shading her hand and watching the worm of movement as the horsemen eased their way over the far hills at the north end of the valley. Then she glanced at Hattie for a quick flickering moment that brought more moistness to her eyes.
“They don’t rightly look like Yankees, Jeremiah. Leave be the gun for now.”
The riders were inching down the slope into the narrow valley, on the far side of the Hook place, beyond the cabin and what barn Jonah and his uncle had been able to throw up by themselves. How she wished either one of them were here now, not gone off to the war. So late in coming home.
Perhaps these were just some soldiers coming home. They sure didn’t look like Yankee soldiers.
Her heart leapt instantly with bright hope, and she swallowed it down as quickly, still shading her eyes against the hot July sun as she watched the horsemen reach the edge of the yard there between the cabin and the barn.
No, not blue-bellies these.
The tall, hulking man in front with the big, black, dusty slouch hat shading his bearded face waved and said something to the others. She could hear his voice, but could not make out the words as he directed men to cover the cabin with their weapons, another bunch to surround the barn.
Then he nudged his horse forward, with three of his men on his heels. Slowly moving into the rows of mature crops, the tall, lathered horse bobbing its head, flecks of foam at the bit. He reined up before her and the children.
“That water in your bucket, ma’am?” he asked as he crossed his wrists over the saddle horn.
Gritta decided he didn’t sound like a Southern man—but, then—a lot of folks come to Missouri didn’t all talk the same neither.
“It is. You care for a drink, sir?”
“I would be dearly grateful for such refreshment, ma’am.” He removed the hat from his head, and she was instantly struck with the long, flowing black curls that fell past his shoulders. He bowed his head. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”
Gritta’s eyes flew to the other three waiting behind the big man. Then she took a step forward, hoisting up the bucket at the end of one arm, the hand still shading her eyes as she studied him for that instant.
“Gritta Hook.”
“Mrs.?”
“Yes. My husband is Jonah.”
“He hard at work today, ma’am?”
For a moment she thought, but could not conceive how better to answer. “He’s away—gone to fight the war. Coming home soon.�
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The man pushed the big slouch hat onto his head and then dragged a hand across his lips as he plunged the dipper into the bucket. After he had handed the bucket back to the three behind him, he turned once more to Gritta.
“Lots of men won’t be coming home, Mrs. Hook. Shame, a downright evil shame of it. War’s like that, though. The Lord has seen that so many were cut down—like winnowing the wheat from the chaff.”
He turned to the three. “You there, Major—finish your drink quickly and get on back to the others. See what stock we can take along while the others are to go through the cabin. I want everything we can use.”
Her heart in her throat, she lunged for his tall boot, caked with dark red dirt in the stirrup. “Don’t steal from us! Dear God—the Yankee soldiers already come through and left us next to nothing.”
He gazed down at her as two of the men turned their glistening horses away, tromping straight across the field, hooves digging up some of the rows of ripening crops.
“My dear woman. We haven’t come to steal from you. We are merely appropriating what is rightfully ours by terms of the covenants the Lord has commanded us to follow in this war against the Gentiles.”
She felt fear rising in her, like a thick ball of something that was bound to gag her, make her spill her scanty breakfast on the ground right here in front of the children.
“Take it and go, then … if you must.” Her heart pounded in her ears like the thundering of water over the falls back in the Shenandoah. How she yearned now for—
“Mrs. Hook, don’t be so rude. We have no intention of merely taking from you and riding on.” He reached inside his long black duster and pulled forth two pistols with white handles.
The smile on his face reminded her of the way old Seth would grin, baring his yellowed teeth, that low rumbling growl troubling his throat when danger lurked near.
The guns were pointed at her and the three children. “We’re inviting you, and your little ones along as well.”
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