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 around 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.”
“Shows that much, does it?” He sighed. “Yes. Proud of my youngest. He died defending his people. Died fighting for the ones he loved. I have to remind myself of that when I get feeling like there’s little else left for an old man like me. And then too I remind myself that I gave my boys a good legacy. There’s something real decent about my boy dying defending those he loved.”
Nate allowed the old frontiersman some time down in his thoughts. Later, as a breeze came up, Deidecker asked, “So Jeremiah did go with you to find her—Gritta—like you said he wanted to there at the side of the woman’s grave?”
Loose-shouldered, Hook shrugged, answering. “We’ll talk more about that last hunt when we get back to home tomorrow afternoon. After we see to Gritta.”
“She cook when you’re gone?”
He wagged his head. “No. Have to leave her food to eat. Can’t let her get her hands on matches. It’s just that … she’s got so forgetful, she might hurt herself. I leave her food what I’ve already cooked if she gets to being hungry. It ain’t often that she eats more’n a mouthful at a time. For the life of me don’t know how she keeps up her strength way she does.”
“At first I thought—well, about that picture at the cabin—thought the woman in the picture was Grass Singing, the Pawnee woman you told me about meeting in Abilene. Then I later had it figured she was Pipe Woman.”
“Shad’s daughter?” Hook asked, his eyes gone wistful in looking at the sunset, the last rosy rays of Spanish gold streaking through the quaking aspen snatched and teased by the breeze. “That’s one woman would’ve been a handful for any man to tackle, Nate. In or out of the blankets. My, but was she ever a prize, that one.”
“Do I detect some old longing there, Jonah?”
He shrugged. “No doubt to it, son. Things been different … well, let’s just say other men might’n stayed on with her and give up what everyone claimed was a hopeless chase.”
“But you didn’t give up, Jonah. That’s the miracle of all of this to me—and you got Gritta back.”
“Me and Jeremiah brung her back, Nate.”
“Where is Jeremiah now? Does he live close?”
“No,” he answered, an immense sadness in that single word. “Down in the Territories.”
“Didn’t you know? Last year Congress made the place a state, Jonah.”
“They have, have they?” A faint smile crossed his face. “Good for them. The Injuns, that is.”
“Call it Oklahoma. Some say it means ’home of the red man.’”
“Home of the red man. Fitting, you know?”
“What’s Jeremiah do down there? Farm?”
“Last I heard, he was working for the army—training horses for the cavalry. Buys and trains mounts.” Abruptly Jonah beamed as proud as any father could, declaring, “He rode with Roosevelt right up San Juan Hill into the teeth of them Spaniards’ guns, you know.”