Hook was in the water, pistol drawn before the two mounted soldiers knew it. He snagged the reins of one rider, nearly upsetting the trooper. The far soldier tried to pull his pistol, but stopped, finding the Confederate’s muzzle pointed at him.
“You gonna live, Artus?” Hook asked in a loud voice, never taking his eyes off the two soldiers who had been dragging the civilian down the streambed.
Moser sputtered, struggling to come out of the shallow stream, raising himself on elbows. His long hair sopped into his eyes as he hacked up the murky, gritty water, and he drew his legs under him. Moser slowly got to his knees, heaving, puking up river-bottom grit.
“I don’t know—”
“You’re in a heap of trouble, mister!” growled one of the soldiers.
“Looks to me like you’re the one staring down the bore of my pistol, soldier.”
“What’s he to you?”
“My cousin,” Hook snapped. “Now—you there, get down real easy and cut ’im loose.” He glanced at the growing crowd of soldiers and civilians on the streambank.
The trooper shook his head. “I ain’t a-gonna—”
“You’ll do, or I’ll wing you so you can’t sit a saddle for a month of Sundays!”
The soldier clambered down and pulled out a folding knife. He was cutting Artus loose when some new, loud voices drew Hook’s attention to the riverbank. A squad of armed soldiers bolted down the slope, piercing the gathered throng of curious spectators.
“Drop your gun, mister!” bawled a soldier.
Hook flicked him with his eyes. He wore three stripes. Red from the neck up and nervous looking, the way he chewed his lip.
“You best keep your finger away from that trigger, soldier,” said Shad Sweete.
Hook quickly glanced at the bank, finding the old trapper wading into the water.
“I ain’t taking my gun off these two until they cut my cousin loose,” Jonah growled.
“We’ll shoot—we have to,” said the nervous sergeant.
“They probably will at that,” Sweete said, measuring the half dozen soldiers.
“Then tell ’em to start shooting.” Hook turned his back on them, again facing the pair who had dragged Moser downstream. “They want to shoot a man in the back—they can start with me. But you remind them, Shad—that this big ugly Yankee here is gonna get a lead ball in the face before I go down.”
The eyes of that burly soldier who still sat his horse widened even more, flickering over the half dozen come to his rescue, then back to the bore of the Confederate’s gun. “Now …” His deep voice cracked, a slight squeak around its edges. “Now, let’s no one go getting fretful here, fellas. Sarge, suppose we just cut this man loose”—and he motioned to the kneeling Moser at the middle of the stream—“and we all call it a day. I figure he’s had enough. What say, Sarge?”
“Can’t do that, Henline,” grumbled the itchy sergeant. “Custer ordered punishment. So punishment it will be.”
“Cut ’im loose—like I told you!” Hook snarled, for a moment wagging his pistol’s muzzle down at the soldier with the folding knife who stood over his cousin.
“Don’t you move, soldier!”
Hook looked up to find Tom Custer loping down the grassy bank.
“There’s hell to pay now, Jonah,” Shad said with a sigh. “We got the general’s brother in the pot now.”
“This man is being punished for mutiny!” the younger Custer declared as he came to a halt in front of the half dozen soldiers, less than ten yards from Jonah and Artus.
“He’s being dragged through the river until he drowns, you stupid sonofabitch!”
Young Custer flared. “Drop your weapon, mister—or there’ll be a dead man in this river.”
“There’ll be two.” Hook slowly brought his pistol off the mounted soldier and pointed it at Tom Custer. His gut told him enough—that at least it was the smart thing to point your gun at the man doing the talking. “You and me, Custer.”
“What’s going on here, Tom?”
The lieutenant colonel appeared in the parting crowd at the top of the bank.
“Got us someone ready to die to cut loose one of the teamsters.”
“The man with the pistol—”
“I know damned well who he is,” Custer snapped at the sergeant. “Hook, isn’t it? One of Hickok’s guides.”
“That’s right, General,” Jonah replied.
“Tell him what’s going on, Jonah,” Shad pleaded.
“Don’t want your goddamned soldiers dragging my cousin through your goddamned river, General. He was trying to help the others you staked out—when he was caught and your men here tried drowning him.”
“I ordered the punishment for your cousin myself.”
Hook smiled. “Then it’s your brother going to die when your soldiers start shooting, General.”
“None of this warrants any shooting,” Custer said, his voice laced with strain.
“You had your own soldiers shot, General,” Hook said. “I think the shooting’s already started. Let’s just get it finished.”
“Don’t threaten me, Mr. Hook.”
“No threat. I just don’t figure I got much left to live for but family. That goddamned war you Yankees whipped on us caused me to lose my wife and children. Far as I know—all I got now is my cousin … this man you about drownded in this shithole river. So—you go and kill him, I figure you might as well kill me same time.”
“I don’t plan on killing anyone, Mr. Hook.”
“I do—and it’s gonna be your brother, General.”
For a long moment the sun beat down on that stretch of prairie river, while the water continued to riffle around the horses’ legs and Artus Moser’s bound and bloody body.
Finally. “Cut the prisoner loose,” Custer said.
“Don’t back down, Autie!” Tom said. “He ain’t got the nerve to shoot me.”
Hook leveled the pistol at the younger brother’s heart, his arm straightening.
“I don’t have time to find out, Lieutenant Custer,” said the elder brother. “We have Indians to track and Indians to fight. Not our own teamsters and scouts. It’s time this outfit was on the march. Now, Sergeant—cut the prisoner loose. Cut all them loose. We’re pointing this bunch south, to Fort Wallace!”
Hook waited as Custer wheeled from the bank and disappeared among the gathered crowd in dusty blue. Some of the half dozen soldiers grumbled, most of all their sergeant as he turned his detail around and trudged away up the slope.
“You heard the general—cut my cousin loose, soldier,” Hook repeated.
As the pair of soldiers led their horses out of the river, Jonah went to his knees in the water beside Artus, dragging his cousin against him, cradling his head, stroking his wet, gritty hair, wiping sand from Moser’s mouth and eyes and nostrils.
“Ain’t no one gonna treat my family this way,” Hook said quietly. “Don’t care if I gotta take on the whole goddamned Yankee army. Ain’t no one gonna dare treat my family this way.”
32
July, 1867
THEY HAD COVERED at least half the ground from the South Platte to Fort Wallace, marching on a trail a shade east of south.
Shad Sweete was today riding point, far in the advance of Custer’s columns. Alone. For three days Jonah Hook had been assigned to bring up the rear of the columns, closing file and watching the backtrail for both stragglers and lurking hostiles. At least that’s what Custer called it.
Yet it was really nothing more than Custer’s way of punishing the civilian scout for what had happened back at the South Fork of the Republican. Make Hook eat the dust of the entire regiment and wagon train as the command ground its way through the low, grass-covered hills of western Kansas. Every night a few miles closer to Fort Wallace and the Denver Road. That much closer to some real food and some shade.
Someone had reminded Sweete this morning that it was the twelfth. July. Just the word itself had always made him hot enough even
without this midsummer sun suspended overhead. At least it was nudging off midsky now. Casting a little bit of a shadow it seemed. Not like at full high, when the only shadow a man could see was directly under a horse’s belly.
It was in that bright light shimmering off the rolling prairie land that he spotted the big-winged black birds fluttering down to roost not far ahead. They were cackling, fighting among one another over their carrion—but scattered momentarily at his approach. The great buzzards came to a rest just yards away, craning their great wrinkled necks at the man as he brought his horse to a halt, having first circled upwind.
A terrible stench greeted Shad when he drew close.
Trying not to breathe through his nose, he ground-hobbled the horse with the rein, then stepped up, cautiously, his eyes watering with the strong smell of death. His skin already crawled, knowing this was only the beginning of it.
“Damn,” he muttered when he recognized what was left of the telltale brand on the torn meat of the rear haunch.
Without slowing, the old man snagged up the rein and did not use the stirrup to vault atop the saddle. In a tight circle he brought his horse around, hammering it with his heels. He feared he knew already.
At the top of the next hill, he was sure of it. Ahead of him, in that broad bowl of rolling country, he spotted three more … then a fourth … four bunches altogether, knots of the big-winged black birds swirling overhead, landing, kee-rawing, then ripping flesh from bleaching bone.
He had seen enough and turned his horse around, pounding hooves back across the sunbaked prairie to the head of the strung-out cavalry column. Shad could see Hickok’s mouth O up, and imagined what the chief of scouts was hollering back to Custer.
“Rider coming in, General! It’s Sweete.”
He brought the big Morgan mare hard around, slowing her, nostrils flaring as he matched the gait of the lieutenant colonel’s mount.
“You and Hickok might wanna come have a look. Something I run onto that will snag your interest, General.”
“Indians?” Custer asked, his pale, sunburned face flushing with excitement.
“Not exactly.”
“Some sign of hostiles?” Hickok inquired.
Shad leveled his eyes on the young chief of scouts. “All the sign a man would care to see.”
Custer turned in the saddle, flinging orders to his adjutant and to the officer of the day to continue their march at the present pace. Then he broke out Major Elliott, along with a sergeant and a half dozen men to escort the two officers behind the two scouts.
“Lead on, Mr. Sweete.”
Without a word, Shad reined away from the head of the column, pointing his nose a little more east of south than the line of march had been taking.
“Buzzards?” Custer inquired as they topped the knoll where they could see the first gathering of the huge flesh-necked meat-eaters.
“Something dead down there, General,” Hickok said.
Custer cleared his throat, removing one of the damp deerskin gloves and stuffing it in his belt. “Mr. Sweete will tell us if we’re going to find a body down there.”
“Only a horse.”
He led them far around the bloating carcass of the white horse, coming back into the stinking carrion on the upwind drift of the prairie breeze rustling the dried grass. That gentle wind and the noisy protests of the scattered buzzards proved the only sound, besides the slow clop of the hooves, then the scrape and grind of Custer’s boots as he got down, alone, and strode purposefully forward to have a look for himself.
He came back to his mount after but a moment, only then removing his hand from his mouth and nose.
“There’s more, Mr. Sweete?”
Shad waited for Custer to swing into the saddle. “Up yonder, General.”
“More of the same?”
Pursing his lips to keep from puking the words, he wagged his head. “No. It’s soldiers.”
Sweete and Hickok watched Custer’s lips form the word, but left it unspoken as he sighed, his eyes narrowing on the middistance. “Take us to them, Mr. Sweete.”
They put the miles behind them, not that many, really. But enough to see it had been a running battle. By the time they topped the last knoll and Shad reined up the entire escort, the flat, sun-shimmering bowl lay before them, populated now with only the kee-rawing, noisy birds of prey.
“One of ’em had his horse go down on him back there,” Shad explained. “Signs of his boots tell it. He was running hard. Iron-shod hoofprints circled back, picked the fella up, and they tried to make it double.”
Custer swallowed. “They didn’t make it, did they?”
“None of ’em, General. I figure that first bunch of buzzards up ahead, down there—just one horse and two bodies there—they made a hell of a fight of it.”
The lieutenant colonel ground his teeth. “Let’s go.”
One horse. Two men. One directly in the tangle of the dead animal’s legs, taking cover. The other body a few yards off. Either dragged there by the warriors working over the bodies, or by the huge, broad-winged birds attempting to drag off their stinking meal-claim.
“This the first time you’ve seen what a warrior can do, General?” Hickok asked.
Custer shook his head, swallowing hard. “No.” He looked up at the old mountain man. “Who was it—the bunch who did this?”
“I got an idea, General. Let’s go see the rest afore I say for sure.”
There were two more horse carcasses, each with a man’s naked, white, bloated, and sunburned body nearby—each man having fought to the end alone—until they came upon the last stand, where the eight had dropped their horses and hunkered down to make a fight of it to the last.
“Bastards didn’t leave much of ’em,” Hickok said, holding his bandanna over his mouth and nose.
Shad breathed through his mouth. Still the stench of it stung his tongue with a sour burn. High meat, he thought. Just what them goddamned buzzards love to eat. High meat going to soup under this unforgiving sun. He prayed to be long gone from there, but knew he would stay until the column arrived and this bunch had a decent burial.
“They were on the road to Fort Wallace?” Custer asked.
Hickok glanced at Sweete. Shad nodded.
“Yes,” Hickok answered. “Headed that way.”
“Likely they figured they would meet up with some sign of you between the Platte and Wallace,” Shad explained.
Custer ordered three of the soldiers to ride back and bring the columns on at moderate speed. A burial detail … shovels … and some prayers were needed over these men, is what he told them before sending the trio off.
“Second Cavalry,” said the lieutenant colonel.
“You know any of them, General?”
“Can’t say as I do, Hickok.” He pointed at the one body with long, black, unbraided hair. It had been stripped and scalped, but for the most part remained unmutilated. Something clearly evident compared to the butchery practiced on the other eleven bodies.
“Who was that?”
Hickok shook his head.
“Name of Red Bead.” Shad looked away to the west where the sun would not fall for many hours yet. Too many hours, and he wanted to be far away by then. Not that he was particularly superstitious about death. But Red Bead and his soul would haunt this ground forever.
“He Cheyenne … Pawnee?” Custer asked.
“No, General. He was Sioux.”
Custer looked up with those blue eyes of his, glaring into the tall mountain man’s face. “You mean he was Sioux … like the ones who killed him?”
Shad nodded.
“That why they didn’t take his scalp?”
“They respected him. Whoever it was killed this bunch—someone knew Red Bead and didn’t want his body touched for the long trip across the Star Road.”
“He died as bravely as the rest,” Custer commented quietly. “I’ll say prayers over his grave as well.”
“You want to show your respect for
how brave that Injun died, General Custer,” Shad stepped right up to the soldier, “you’ll wrap his body in a blanket and leave it lay right here. Don’t you dare say your white medicine words over his body. It would be a mighty bad sign to do such.”
“Just leave his body here? Not bury him with military honors?”
“He’s already been honored by whoever killed him, General,” Shad explained. “Just let his body be … for the wind and the birds of prey … and the winters yet to come visit this sacred place.”
Jonah hadn’t seen such savagery in longer than he could remember—if ever.
Two of the white soldiers with Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder’s doomed patrol had evidently been alive enough when the warriors reached them; then they had been tortured to death. Two small fires over which to exact some excruciatingly delicious agony on their prisoners while death lingered, hovering closer and closer.
Every nose hacked off. Faces hammered into pulp. Tongues severed at the root. Shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles all with sinews and tendons severed. Flopping loose as a wood marionette when the burial detail hauled the bodies over to each shallow grave. Other soldiers were assigned to bring along the severed limbs.
Naked, white, puffy bodies were lowered into the shallow, yawning holes and quickly covered up by the grunting, puking burial detail, each man sweating through it, some collapsing. The officer in charge had to order another man up to complete what the others could not. Few made it through without losing what they had left in their bellies from breakfast many hours before.
Each body pierced with so many arrows had reminded Jonah of the soft velvet pincushion his mother had used almost daily back in the Shenandoah, down in the shadow of Big Cobbler while he was growing into a man. Before he moved to Missouri. Before he marched off to war behind General Sterling Price. And ended up never seeing his family again.
He squeezed the thought from his mind—the way he wrung his socks out once they reached Fort Wallace. Hard, even savagely—he forced the thought from his mind every time it came to haunt him with not knowing. Trying again to concentrate on that image of his mother’s pincushion—so he would not have to remember the image of those twelve bodies, each bristling with no less than forty, perhaps fifty shafts, silently rustled by the omnipresent prairie wind.
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