Winter Rain

While the celebration of men and the talk of weather and stock and horseflesh was one thing Jonah hoped to avoid, it was the Dickinson women that Jonah tried most to stay clear of. Too much did they remind him of those once a part of his own life. Both gone: one off to St. Louis and Miss Emily Rupert’s Seminary; the other … just gone.

Memories of her were the bitterest water Jonah had been forced to drink in those years lost and gone. But drink he did, forcing himself to taste a little more of her remembrance each day. Sad glimpses of what he once had, triggered ofttimes by smells, delicious smells coming from the kitchen where the three Dickinson women cooked supper for that bunch. As the others joked and sang and arm wrestled, Jonah remembered the smells of snap beans and carrots set on a pale-blue plate next to a mound of Gritta’s mashed potatoes, them that she boiled and mashed, then served up skins and all.

So as much as Jonah yearned to study the face of a white woman, to stand just close enough to determine how a white woman might smell, as much as he felt a need to be in the company of such genteel farming folk of the earth like those he was raised among, Hook of a sudden felt ill at ease, ill-mannered, rough, and more coarse than he ever had in all his life. And downright afraid of making a damned fool of himself.

So he stayed to himself, there in the bam with Two Sleep while the younger Rangers flirted with the three Dickinson girls and the missus baked dried apple pies for her guests. The merry sounds of men at their fun, the tinkle of women’s laughter, made Jonah recall the days of camp meetings back to the Shenandoah—religious tent revivals that got so frolicsome, the long-coated preachers had to keep women off the grounds between sunset and sunrise.

“Peel your ears back, Jonah—I got some news!” bellowed Niles Coffee as he strode up through the deepening shadows that first night after the company had come in to the ranch.

“What news?”

Coffee settled, his back against the rough-plank barn wall where Hook leaned. “Dickinson says Mackenzie’s figuring he’s got the Comanche whipped bad enough so he’s gonna offer the Kwahadi a chance to make peace.”

“What’s his peace offer mean to us?”

Sucking on the chewed and fractured stem of his old pipe, Coffee answered. “Mackenzie offers peace to Parker’s bunch to come in—that means the war’s over.”

Hook studied the flame-headed Ranger beside him a moment there in the last glow of the day, the sun having slid beyond the far rim of the prairie, beyond a small piece of ground above the barn where he had frequently gone to sit, staring, wondering.

Jonah asked, “Ain’t that what you boys wanted to do all along? Get the war over with?”

With a wag of his red head. Coffee said, “Not exactly. Those of us I can speak for, we took the oath so we could get us a crack at the Comanche. Captain Lockhart ain’t leading no rag-tailed bunch of splay-footed farmers now. To the last man we joined the Rangers to fight those sonsabitching red-bellies. Never counted on the army coming behind us and making it unpossible to hunt down Comanche.”

“That what Mackenzie will do? Keep us from hunting?”

He dug at the ground with a sliver of weathered barn wood. “Not likely the army can keep us from hunting, Jonah. Just keep us from … killing Comanche.”

“You want to get your licks in first—don’t you, Coffee?”

The sergeant’s dark, larval eyes narrowed on Hook. “Don’t you? Seeing how the Kwahadi are the bunch that stole your boys?”

“Just want my boys. That’s all.”

Coffee snorted quietly. “Can’t believe you could just ride in there, fetch back your boys, and ride off without taking blood from them that stole your kin.”

“My boys is all … all I need,” Jonah repeated, his words coming hard. Hot flecks began to sting his eyes, and something sour and thick clogged his throat.

They fell silent for a few minutes as Coffee sucked on his pipe and the sky they watched wheeled from orange to rose, then faded to the deeper hues of twilight.

“Major Jones sent out the word,” Coffee said.

“Word that Mackenzie was gonna make peace with the Comanche?”

“Yep. Sent a rider through here a few days back with the major’s dispatch for the captain. Jones wants all his company captains to meet him at Griffin in a couple weeks to plan our final campaign.”

“What’re you talking about—a final campaign? You just said the army’s making peace with the Comanche. It’s over, Sergeant. Your goddamned war is over!”

“Not my war, Jonah,” Coffee growled. “Not the war we Texans been fighting since the days before we tore free from Mexico. No, sir—by god-bloody-damned! This war ain’t over till Texas says it’s over. Those are our Comanches—not the army’s. And sure as hell they ain’t Mackenzie’s.” He raised his arm, pointing at the house porch where many of the Rangers lounged. “See them boys? Not a one of them ready to say their war is over, Jonah. Their war. My war. I lost kin! Goddammit—I lost kin!”