“Naw. Protecting the wire from the Injuns. Was later we tracked Injuns for General Connor.”
“Connor jumped the wrong village, said many.”
Jonah screwed that around in his head for some time. “Seems I remember a few of the scouts saying something about that. Wasn’t Sioux or Cheyenne.”
“Indian tell you right. Connor wrong.”
A shudder passed through him, like old Seth shaking water off his back. “Not my affair no more. That’s three years gone now.”
Two Sleep seemed to regard him a moment, then took his eyes off the white man. They did not speak for some time until Hook offered the Shoshone a dark sliver of chaw. The warrior took the offering of tobacco, stuffed it inside his cheek, and nodded his thanks.
“Can’t for the life of me figure out why a man like Jim Bridger would want to build a fort here in the middle of all this nothing,” Jonah murmured. “Not when he traveled a whole lot of prettier country in his days—trapping beaver, hunting buffalo. Don’t make much sense to me, him deciding to set down roots here when there’s a lot other country more pleasing to the eye.”
“Brid-ger see trail here. Brid-ger come here,” Two Sleep replied after some thought. “Trail here where the white man goes west to the sun’s bed.”
“California,” Hook added. “It’s called California … and Oregon too.”
“Two name for same place?”
Hook snorted. “Naw, two places.”
“Why all want to go there? So many wagon, so many people—that place fill up quick.”
“Naw, not fast. Lots of land, I heard. Good sun and some rain. Grow some crops.” Jonah could see that Two Sleep had himself grown bewildered. “Crops: like corn and wheat. Folks grow crops to sell.”
“Hard work, this grow?”
He nodded, pursing his lips a bit. “Hard, but good work.”
“Man work the ground alone?”
“Not if he can help it, he don’t.”
“Your boys, maybe you help them work the ground, you get back home.”
His belly went cold as winter ice. “They … they’re not back there. Not home no more.”
“Oh,” and the Shoshone fell quiet a moment. “They in front, ahead, out there with your woman, eh?”
With a shrug Jonah answered, “No. Last I got wind of ’em was in Indian Territory. Got sold off to some Mexicans.”
Two Sleep wagged his head sadly. “Comancheros take boys far away. Go to slaves.”
“Likely.”
“You work the land hard again some day. Grow crop?”
Hook gazed at the far hills, studying the sky tinted with the strange mineral hues of sunset. “Maybe. Lot of doing between now and that time. Never really thought about farming again till you brought it up. Don’t really seem like something I wanna do without the boys, without my family around.”
“You work the ground, grow crops. Like a man grows his children, Hook. You work hard, grow your children. See them grow. Man always must say good-bye to them.”
“Don’t you understand? I didn’t see ’em grow. That’s the damned shame of it.”
Both of them went silent for a long time, Two Sleep broiling skewered venison over their greasewood fire, Hook jabbing at the burning limbs with a wand of green willow. Each deep in his own thoughts.
“Man grows crops, sell what he don’t eat. Money he gets?”
Jonah looked up, seeing the warrior’s old eyes bright. “Yes, money. Money to gamble at cards, you red heathen.”
The Shoshone wagged his head. “No, money to buy whiskey—what else for, you white heathen!”
A couple days back, Hook had owned up to liking the Shoshone more and more as the old Indian talked of a bygone time shared with Bridger and Sweete. Talked of those halcyon days at the end of the beaver trade and before the start of the white man’s war against himself back east. Those years were gone the way of dust now: a time when Two Sleep had learned the rudiments of the white man’s confusing language, learned better still the power of whiskey. Best yet, he learned the potent numbers and symbols emblazoned on the pasteboard cards the white man used to gamble. No carved pieces of bone, no painted sticks for this Shoshone. Those numbered, painted, powerful cards and their manifold combinations had fascinated him right from the start. They had been good days.
“I see why Shad liked you,” Hook said, right out of the blue that evening camped among the cottonwood on the west bank of the Green.
“Sweete a bad gambler.”
“He was, was he?”
“Worse I ever see.”
“Damn good teacher, though, don’t you reckon?”
Two Sleep smiled at that, dragging a hand beneath his runny nose aggravated by the smoke from their cooking fire. “Damn good teacher, Hook. But not every man a good learner, like you.”
“Why—I figure that’s about the first compliment you’ve give me, you red heathen.”
Two Sleep grinned. “Better you know tracking and fighting and Indians, Hook. You no good learner at cards and whiskey.”
“How the hell you know? Way I figure it, you learned just what you needed to get along in the white man’s world, sure enough.”
“And you, Hook? You learn all you need to get along in the world out here?” The Shoshone swept one arm around in a wide arc.
“Likely I have. So there’s only two things left for me to learn.”
“Two Sleep know one thing you want to find: where your family go.”
Hook nodded in agreement. “That, and why they was ever took from me in the first place.”
The white men had come riding into this river valley late in the raiding season, this Drying Grass Moon, following the Shahiyena trail. The white men hungered to find this string of villages clustered beside the Arikaree, hundreds of their skin lodges breasting against the summer-pale sky, their great pony herds cropping grass for miles around on the surrounding prairie, dropping their fragrant offal among that left in the timeless passings of the shaggy buffalo.
Upstream from the camps of Tall Bull and White Horse stood two large villages of Brule Sioux who rode under the bellicose Pawnee Killer—where High-Backed Bull now waited impatiently with the other young warriors for the council to conclude. Only then could they be about this business of killing the half-a-hundred.
It was Pawnee Killer himself who had brushed up against none other than George Armstrong Custer’s gallant Seventh Cavalry one summer gone now, when the short-grass time filled the bellies of the Lakota war ponies grown sleek and fast. And for this summer’s hunt, the Brule had joined the Shahiyena camps composed mostly of Dog Soldiers under fighting chiefs. Close by stood a much smaller camp circle, a few Northern Arapaho who traveled in the formidable shadow of the mighty Roman Nose.
For the sake of mutual strength following their independent raids on the settlements in Kansas, these warrior bands had come together with the rest to hunt buffalo here where the immeasurable herds still gathered in the great valley of the Plum River, what the white man called his Republican. Last moon, while celebrating their annual sun dance on a tributary of the Plum called Beaver Creek, roaming scouts from the villages had first reported spotting the half-a-hundred. From their dress, the fifty did not appear to be soldiers. Still, this was a season for some precaution. The news of the white men caused the bands to begin migrating to the northwest. Surely, the tribal leaders reasoned, if we see these white scouts on our trail, close behind will come the long columns of soldiers.
It was aggravating, yes, having such an annoyance on their backtrail. Still, the half-a-hundred were hardly worth the effort of putting on one’s paint and taking the cover from one’s shield, thought High-Backed Bull as he paced back and forth in the bright sun of that waning afternoon.
“These are fighting men, warriors—this half-a-hundred,” declared Porcupine when he had finished tying up the tail of his pony in preparation of battle.