Cry of the Hawk
( Jonas Hook - 1 )
Terry C. Johnston
Forced to serve as a Yankee after his capture at Pea Ridge, Confederate soldier Jonah Hook returns from the war to find his Missouri farm in shambles.
From Publishers Weekly
Set primarily on the high plains during the 1860s, this novel has the epic sweep of the frontier built into it. Unfortunately, Johnston (the Sons of the Plains trilogy) relies too much on a facile and overfamiliar style. Add to this the overly graphic descriptions of violence, and readers will recognize a genre that seems especially popular these days: the sensational western. The novel opens in the year 1908, with a newspaper reporter Nate Deidecker seeking out Jonah Hook, an aged scout, Indian fighter and buffalo hunter. Deidecker has been writing up firsthand accounts of the Old West and intends to add Hook's to his series. Hook readily agrees, and the narrative moves from its frame to its main canvas. Alas, Hook's story is also conveyed in the third person, thus depriving the reader of the storytelling aspect which, supposedly, Deidecker is privileged to hear. The plot concerns Hook's search for his family--abducted by a marauding band of Mormons--after he serves a tour of duty as a "galvanized" Union soldier (a captured Confederate who joined the Union Army to serve on the frontier). As we follow Hook's bloody adventures, however, the kidnapping becomes almost submerged and is only partially, and all too quickly, resolved in the end. Perhaps Johnston is planning a sequel; certainly the unsatisfying conclusion seems to point in that direction.
July 26, 1865
On the far hills, hundreds of warriors were leaping atop their ponies, kicking them furiously downhill toward the river. They had spotted the tops of the wagons not long after the fort had seen the incoming train, inching along the road on the Indians’ side of the North Platte.
“How many’s with Sergeant Custard?” Shad Sweete inquired.
“I remember him having ten soldiers and fourteen teamsters,” Hook answered.
“Say!” shouted a picket above them. “The Injuns just cut off five of our boys from the rest of the wagon.”
“How many warriors following those five?” Shad slung his voice up the wall.
“More’n a hundred, mister.”
Hook felt helpless, knowing some of those men out there by face, if not by name. Knowing they had families back home, waiting for a husband or father or brother to come marching home. “Ain’t nothing we can do to help ’em?”
“Ain’t a damned thing now, Jonah,” Shad whispered. “Not a damned thing.”
BOOKS BY TERRY C. JOHNSTON
Cry of the Hawk
Winter Rain
Dream Catcher
Carry the Wind
Borderlords
One-Eyed Dream
Dance on the Wind
Buffalo Palace
Crack in the Sky
Ride the Moon Down
Death Rattle
Wind Walker
SONS OF THE PLAINS NOVELS
Long Winter Gone
Seize the Sky
Whisper of the Wolf
THE PLAINSMEN NOVELS
Sioux Dawn
Red Cloud’s Revenge
The Stalkers
Black Sun
Devil’s Backbone
Shadow Riders
Dying Thunder
Blood Song
Reap the Whirlwind
Trumpet on the Land
A Cold Day in Hell
Wolf Mountain Moon
Cries from the Earth
Lay the Mountain Low
for Bruce and Sandra,
and all they’ve meant to me
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Hook Family
Jonah Hook
Gritta (Moser) Hook
Hattie Hook
Jeremiah Hook
Ezekiel Hook
Hook’s Mentor
Shadrach Sweete Toote Sweete/Shell Woman
Pipe Woman—daughter
High-Backed Bull—son
Danite Freebooters
Colonel Jubilee Usher
Major Lemuel “Boothog” Wiser
Captain Eloy Hastings
Riley Fordham
Laughing Jack
Healy Stamps
Sam Palmer
Major Military Characters
General William Tecumseh Sherman—Commander, Military Division of the Missouri
Lieutenant-General Philip H. Sheridan—Commander, Military Dept. of the Platte
Lieutenant Caspar Collins
General Patrick E. Connor—Commander, Military Dept. of the Plains
Captain Henry Leefeldt—Co. K (Camp Marshall)
Captain A. Smith Lybe
Sergeant Amos Custard—11th Kansas Cavalry
First Sergeant William R. Moody—Co. I
Major Martin Anderson—Platte Bridge Station, post commander
Captain Henry Bretney—11th Ohio Cavalry
Lieutenant George Walker—Platte Station Adjutant
Corporal James Shrader—11th Kansas Cavalry
Captain Henry E. Palmer—Powder River Exped. Quartermaster
Colonel Henry E. Maynadier—Commander, Fort Laramie
Dr. Henry R. Porter—surgeon, 7th U. S. Cavalry, Ft. Hays
Captain Frederick W. Benteen—7th U. S. Cavalry
Major Wycliffe Cooper—7th U. S. Cavalry
Captain George W. Yates—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Myles W. Moylan—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Thomas Ward Custer—7th U. S. Cavalry
Major Joel H. Elliott—7th U. S. Cavalry
Captain Louis M. Hamilton—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder—2nd U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Edward Godfrey—7th U. S. Cavalry
Pawnee Battalion Major Frank North Lieutenant Issac Davis (Co. B) Captain Luther North Half Rope
Lieutenant/Captain James Murie (Co. B) Sgt. Bear Runs Him
Major Indian Characters Crazy Horse—Oglalla Porcupine—Cheyenne Spotted Tail—Brule Whistler—Brule
Roman Nose—Cheyenne war chief Grass Singing—Pawnee
George Bent—half-breed Cheyenne son of fur trader Bent Black Kettle—Cheyenne
Blind Wolf—Cheyenne chief (father to High-Back Wolf) Pawnee Killer—Brule Spotted Wolf—Cheyenne Young Man Afraid—Oglalla He Dog—Oglalla High-Back Wolf—Cheyenne Turkey Leg—Cheyenne chief
Major Scouts
Jim Bridger
Captain E. W. Nash—Omaha and Winnebago scouts (Powder River)
California Joe (Moses) Milner—Hancock Expedition
Jack Corbin—Hancock Expedition
James Butler Hickok—Hancock Expedition
Will Comstock—Platte River Expedition
Major Civilian Characters
Nathan (Nate) Deidecker—newsman, Omaha Bee
Artus Moser
Samuel Hosking
Eldon Boatwright
Major Edward W. Wynkoop—government agent to the Cheyenne
Colonel Jesse W. Leavenworth—government agent to the Sioux
Sidney Gould—mercantile sutler, Fort Larned
It is not easy to visualize the enormous spread of frontier where these 6,000 [galvanized Yankees] marched and fought and endured the tedium of garrison duties. From Fort Kearney to Julesburg. From Julesburg to Laramie and along the Sweetwater through South Pass to Utah. From Julesburg up the South Platte to Denver, by Cache la Poudre to the Laramie Plains and Fort Bridger …. They made themselves a part of all the raw and racy names on that wild land of buffalo and Indians—Cottonwood Springs and Three Crossings, Lodgepole and Alkali
Station, Medicine Creek and Sleeping Water, Fort Zarah and White Earth River, St. Mary’s, Fort Wicked, Laughing Wood, Soldier Creek, Rabbit Ear Mound, Dead Man’s Ranche, and Lightning’s Nest.
—Dee Brown
The Galvanized Yankees
Led by desperate men … the guerillas, most of them only boys, fought a total war. West of the Mississippi they plunged a fairly stable … society into intense partisan conflict that was felt by every man, woman and child. This was not a war of great armies and captains, this was bloody local insurrection, a war between friends and neighbors—a civil war in the precise definition of that term. Here organized bands of men killed each other and the civil population hundreds of miles behind the recognized battlefronts. Here there was ambush, arson, execution and murder; warfare without rules, law or quarter.
—Richard S. Brownlee
Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy
Prologue
Late Summer, 1908
“THERE AIN’T TIME for you to make it back to town before dark,” the old frontiersman said. “I best make you comfortable here.”
Nate Deidecker marveled at the old man’s vitality. Something on the order of seventy-one years old now, and still the former plains scout stood as straight as a fresh-split fence rail. Only the careful, considered pace he gave to all things betrayed his true age.
“I appreciate that, Mr. Hook.”
“Told you—you’re to call me Jonah.” The old man smiled, a few of his teeth missing. Not unexpected. “We’re friends, Nate.”
Nathan appreciated that, having made a friend like Jonah Hook so quickly. Yet there was something that bothered the newspaperman who had traveled to Wyoming from Omaha, on a hunch and a limited budget begrudged him from a tightfisted managing editor at the Omaha Bee. In 1908 there weren’t many newsmen actively following up the old warriors who still had stories to tell.
Having heard whisper of an unknown former scout living somewhere at the base of the Big Horn Mountains, Deidecker had finally convinced his editor and publisher to open their wallets and spring for a round-trip rail ticket, along with expenses for hiring the horse and carriage he had driven down from Sheridan.
Stepping off the railroad platform, he had been met by the aging newsman who had founded and owned the Sheridan Press.
“How’d you end up picking me, Mr. Kemper?” Deidecker asked as the two sat down for coffee once a carriage and horse had been secured outside the bustling Sheridan café. The summer sunlight was startlingly bright on the high plains. Even here in the café, Deidecker found himself squinting.
“You been writing stories, haven’t you?”
Nate swallowed the hot coffee, its scorch something akin to the hot August weather that had accompanied him all the way west across Nebraska. “What stories?”
The old newsman chuckled. “Your stories about the old plainsmen. I don’t mean those goddamned bragging, strutting peacocks we’ve seen time and again.” He quickly leaned across the table, head close, grasping Deidecker’s wrist between his old hands. “We’re talking a different sort of man here, you understand.”
Nate Deidecker looked down at the waxy hands gripping him, the ink forever tattooed in dark crescents at the base of the man’s fingernails. “I understand, Mr. Kemper. Just as you said when you wrote me—not like Buffalo Bill over at Cody, or Pawnee Bill down in Oklahoma. You said Will Kemper would steer me to the real thing.”
Kemper leaned back and seemed to suck on a tooth a moment before speaking. “This man’s the real thing. Those others you’ve been writing about either been honest-to-goodness grandstanders or they simply aren’t the caliber of the man I want you to meet.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jonah Hook.”
“Why haven’t I ever heard of him?”
Kemper smiled, running a single finger around the rim of his white china cup. “As long as I’ve been writing stories out here, it seems the ones who got the best stories to tell are always the ones who keep most to themselves.”
Deidecker ruminated on that, sipping the hot coffee he really didn’t relish on this hot summer afternoon. Something else to drink was on his mind, like a beer in that shadowy, beckoning place across the street. Unconsciously he wiped a hand across his lips before he replied.
“One thing’s bothered me ever since that first letter you wrote me.”
“You write good stuff, young man,” Kemper said. “That’s why I came to you first. I’ve been reading everything you’ve written about the old scouts you’ve found on your own. You can be proud your copy’s been picked up by the Tribune and the Herald.”
“I am—but I want to know why you want me to talk with this particular fella. Why don’t you?”
“Don’t get me wrong—I’ve talked with the man many a time,” Kemper said, without the least bit of defensiveness.
“Surely you could write this story yourself. Why don’t you?”
Kemper once more leaned in close to the young reporter.
“Because you write as well as I did when I was your goddamned age, Deidecker.” Slowly he creaked back in the chair. “I don’t write that well now. Don’t do anything that well now.”
Deidecker pushed his cup and saucer aside, glad to be through with it. Itching to get on with the long ride south out of Sheridan. “He knows I’m coming?”
“Like I said, when you told me you’d be here—I went down there to tell Jonah.”
“No problems?”
Kemper shook his head. “No problems. Just take it slow. Don’t rush things.”
Deidecker had patted his coat pocket, knowing he would be shedding the wool suit coat as soon as he stepped outside to the carriage. From inside the pocket came the reassuring sound of the folded map Will Kemper had drawn him of the route to the cabin where the Omaha newsman would find this reclusive Jonah Hook.
“I best be going.”
Kemper looked out the window. “Yes. It’s a long ride.”
Deidecker held his hand down to the Sheridan newsman, who did not rise from his chair, as if he were comfortable right as he was and was not about to be disturbed from his perch by the formalities of another man’s leave-taking. Kemper took Nate’s hand. They shook, then the older man held Deidecker’s for a moment longer, looking directly into his eyes.
“Find out about the woman—his wife,” Kemper whispered. “No man’s ever found out about her.”
Nate remembered how at that very moment the cold splash of something had run down the length of his spinal cord. “Is she—was she killed somehow?”
Kemper removed his hand from Deidecker’s sweating palms. “Not exactly. No. You’ll see her … meet her.”
“She’s there? With the old man.”
“He loves her deeply. And she’s all he has now. Except the stories.”
“The stories.”
“Best you go now.”
“Yes, Mr. Kemper. I’ll come round when I get back to town.”
Kemper was gazing back out the window at the bright splash of liquid sunshine spraying the hot, dusty street.
“Like I said, Mr. Deidecker. Take your time asking—and you will be richly rewarded.”
Funny how things had turned out on that long ride south from Sheridan, Wyoming, crossing the Tongue River and heading toward the country where Colonel Henry B. Carrington had decided to raise the pine stockade for his Fort Phil Kearny in the middle of Red Cloud’s hunting ground some forty-two years gone. Not that long, Nate had thought at first. Many a man that old or older.
But as the horse hit its comfortable stride and the wheels of the jitney clattered and rumbled along the jarring ruts of the old wagon road that led him south toward the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains, Nathan Deidecker himself slowed down.
His heart found a new pace. What’s more, his own youthful and impetuous hurry to get on with things was seeping out of him with every drop of sweat pulled from him by this high, arid land. What was normally the aggravation of summer’s heat now bec
ame something to be savored as richly as the smell of green-backed and white sage, stunted cedar and juniper.
He turned again now to look at the woman in her old rocking chair, remembering Kemper’s cryptic admonition.
“Find out about the woman.”
Deidecker watched as the thin old man descended the five creaking steps from the porch into the grassy, dusty yard in front of the old cabin nestled here in the foothills, beneath the shadow of Cloud Peak.
Jonah Hook went about pulling firewood from the cords of it he had stacked against the north and west sides of the cabin. A few pieces he selected for kindling and split them agilely. One final thin sliver of kindling the old man furred into curls that he laid atop a generous pile of ashes filling an old fire pit. Dragging a wooden lucifer across one of the flat stones ringing the fire pit, Hook started his supper fire as the sun sank closer and closer to Cloud Peak.
Swallowing hard, just as he had when preparing to commit one of the deadly sins of a schoolboy in class with the teacher’s back turned, Deidecker glanced again at the old woman. For the first time all afternoon, finding himself amazed that she continued to rock in that dark, cherry-wood, ladder-back rocker with its old arms rubbed down to the color of yellow pine.
She hadn’t spoken to him all afternoon. Looking at him only once with those cloudy blue eyes of hers when the old man first brought the newsman up onto the porch when Deidecker arrived. Here out of the sun at that moment, she had seemed to study something in his eyes only, and only for a moment—not really looking at the newspaperman, rather looking through him, somewhere—then went back to staring up at the green hills gone summer brown and gold, beyond them the blue and purple and lavender of the high places tucked beneath the clouds of this high land.
Never a word. Not a sound from her except for the incessant creaking of the rocker’s bows on the plank porch.
“I built this place for us, you know.”