Winter Rain

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.”

“If that doesn’t beat all, Jonah!” Nate exclaimed, sensing at least one story that might come from Jeremiah’s remarkable life. Taken by the marauders; sold to comancheros; his years among the Comanche and his life as a warrior on the southern plains. Yes, Nate glowed, knowing he had more stories he could write: front-page, banner-headline stories.

Deidecker said, “So Jeremiah was the handsome young man in the chromo you have back at the cabin.”

“Yes, Nate. That was took a few years after we went back to Cassville to fill in those two graves in seventy-five. Time I buried Zeke.”

Nathan studied the old man. Jonah was frozen, staring down at his hand held motionless over the onion and knife and the bark slab he was using as a cutting board. Deidecker’s heart lurched for the pain that remembrance must have caused the old man.

Quietly Deidecker said, “No one could ever blame himself for what happened to Zeke the way you’ve been blaming yourself all these years.”

For a long, long time Jonah did not answer. When he did, he began by working the knife down through the onion again. “Should’ve brung him back alive too.”

“Three out of four—good Lord … after all those years, Jonah—my God! Bringing back three out of the four from the clutches of that madman and all the hell he had caused your family.”

Jonah glared at the newsman. “Ought’n been different, Nate. Ain’t no one left for me to blame now but myself.”

“That’s the cruelest blame of all, Jonah.”