Cry of the Hawk by Terry C. Johnston

Author:Terry C. Johnston
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307755810
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-06-22T20:00:00+00:00

Shad Sweete thought he recognized something familiar about the distant, thin rail of a man at first, then put the nudge of recollection out of his mind. It simply couldn’t be.

Not that the rider didn’t look one whole hell of a lot like someone he knew—or had known—but that it just didn’t seem likely to find the man out here. Must be the sun playing tricks on him.

No way Jonah Hook would be riding in behind Milner and James Butler Hickok, with the rest of those civilian scouts. Hook had gone back home to Missouri, and Sweete doubted there would be anything that could drag the Confederate off his farm, what with the way he talked and talked about his family and his place all through those months they had shared out on the Emigrant Road and up to the Powder River country. Likely nothing could shake Hook loose.

“Shad Sweete!”

“That you, Joe?” he called back to California Joe Milner.

The long-bearded plainsman brought his mule to a halt beside Sweete there at the edge of the parade of Fort Harker, central Kansas. “Before you go to hugging your how-dos on me, I figured I’d better ask you if you know this young fella. He claims you do.”

“Howdy, Shad,” the thin one said, kicking a leg over the saddle and dropping to the ground on both feet.

“Jonah?”

“By damned,” Joe said, “you do know one another!”

Shad embraced Hook fiercely. “What the hell you—”

“I don’t think Joe believed me when I told him I’d rid with you and Bridger,” Hook said. “Gabe here with you?”

“He’s gone back east, Jonah,” Shad said quietly. “Figures his time might come soon.”

“He dying?”

“Not just yet. But he’s give up on scouting for a time. Now answer my question, boy—what the devil brings you here when you got family back to home depending on you?”

Shad watched as Jonah glanced at Milner, and Milner urged his mule away with the rest of the scruffy civilian scouts James Butler Hickok had brought in from Hays to join up with Custer’s chief of scouts.

Jonah’s eyes narrowed. “They’re gone, Shad.”

“Dead?”

He shook his head. “I wish I knew. Not a trace.”

“Up and gone—like smoke?”

“Stole.”

“Took off, like prisoners?”

“Or worse.”

“You know who?”

“A little. A bad bunch running through Missouri there at the end of the war. Taking what they wanted from farms and settlements.”

“Heard tales there was a lot of that,” Sweete replied, not knowing what else to say.

Inside were a hundred feelings felt for the young man right now—but none which Shad could put to word. Instead, he drew Jonah near again. A fierce hug.

“Damn, it’s good to see you, Shad.” He pulled back, dragging a hand angrily beneath his nose. “Want you meet a cousin of mine. Hired on for the wagon train.”

“What you been doing since last I saw you?” Shad asked, eyeing the columns of cavalry pulling in behind the scouts, marching across the parade and preparing to go into camp on the far side of Fort Harker.

“Got back home finally, that winter.

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