Winter Rain

And the Comanche had nodded. Then finally said in crude, stuttering English, “Jeremiah Hook … me.”

Coffee and Callicott had gently rolled Jonah over before Two Sleep tore strips from his own cotton shirt to make bandages to lay on the gaping wounds: muscles torn asunder, lying purple and red against the whitish-purple of bone. Jonah’s breath whistled through his blood-flecked nose, and at the back of his throat he gurgled slightly.

They had to tell Jonah about all that days later when he had the strength to listen in those rare times he came to and opened his glazed eyes. Two days after the fight, after burning and destroying the village, Colonel Davidson’s buffalo soldiers had pulled out for the east. Two more days and Captain Lockhart had started his own men south. Two Sleep helped John Corn and June Callicott craft the half-dozen travois they used to pull their wounded behind captured Comanche ponies.

The Rangers buried their dead there in the middle of that small circle of frozen horseflesh.

Jeremiah cleaned his brother’s body, then wrapped Ezekiel Hook in a blanket and buffalo robe he claimed from the lodges before the whole village was put to the torch by the buffalo soldiers.

When at last it came time for the Rangers to go, Jeremiah had knelt over his father, gently awakening him before Lockhart started Company C south.

“You bring Zeke along?” Jonah had asked that cloudy morning that promised an afternoon squall of sleet boiling on the horizon.

Jeremiah had nodded. “Like you asked.”

Now his son’s English had gotten better for all the practice over the past weeks as they followed Company C south by east toward Jacksboro and Fort Richardson. It was there that Jonah looked up after that awful, bouncing ride he suffered in the travois and beheld Captain Lamar Lockhart come back on foot, removing his hat. The Ranger chief stood above him a moment, as if that courageous man were of a sudden fiddle-footed and shy.

“Time for you to head on home, I s’pose, Jonah Hook,” Lockhart had said.

“S’pose I can. Least I found my boys.” His eyes had stung as he stretched the healing flesh to reach into his pocket, the only one he had, a pocket sewn in the greasy shirt over his heart. It was there the Rangers carried their badges.

Jonah pulled out his six-pointed star and offered it to the sad-eyed captain. Lockhart took it reluctantly.

“Won’t be needing it now,” Hook said, tiring from the talk already.

“You keep it, Private,” Lockhart said, backing off a step and putting his hat back on his head while more of the company gathered in a crescent behind him. “Just want you to know, Jonah Hook—the Rangers will always be in need of men like you.”

“By damn if that ain’t the Lord’s honest truth,” Deacon Johns added.

When Lockhart saluted the man lashed to the travois, there was a rustle as the others of Company C did the same.

“We wish you God’s speed as you take this long trail back home,” the deacon said, coming forward to squeeze Hook’s hand with his strong, veiny paw.

“Going home only for as long as I can’t sit a horse, Deacon. Still got another out there I swore I’d find.”

“May the good Lord watch over you and keep you in the palm of His hand,” Johns said, squeezing Hook’s hand again before he turned away to join Coffee, Callicott, Pettis, and the rest.

“Don’t make yourself a stranger you ever come down into Texas again,” Lockhart said, his voice cracking, though it filled with cheer. “You ask for me—or Company C. Ain’t nothing you’ll ever want for in west Texas.”

That had been painful, bouncing weeks ago. Watching Lamar Lockhart and his company of Rangers move off quietly. Good men he would remember for the rest of his days.

Two Sleep had done most of the bartering for provisions. Jeremiah’s halting English still came hard those two days they hung close by at Richardson and Jacksboro before finally pushing north one dawn as the yellow light stirred up into the blue-gray of a late-winter sky. They were heading east by north for Missouri: two riders and five horses, a wounded man slung on one bouncing travois, along with a long, narrow bundle encased in a buffalo skin and bound by rawhide strips for its journey.

Through those Indian nations granted reservations in the Territories, they finally crossed the Arkansas and into the thickly wooded hills that Jonah began to recognize as winter whimpered its last. He was able to ride that last week, able to stay in the saddle a few hours more every day, his left arm lashed tightly to his chest to keep that broken collarbone from moving, to keep the pain down across the shoulder blade. Doing what he could with the tightness of the muscles and his own damned hide, so tight it didn’t feel as if it were really his, more like he had tried on a suit of skin a size or two too small.