Winter Rain

Frowning, Two Sleep brooded on how he would approach the camp—certain of only one thing. He would have to show himself before the white man got too much in the drinking way, or he might shoot a strange Indian—out of fear, or devilment.

Best to show himself and soon. Or, Two Sleep figured, he would simply have to do without any of that stranger’s whiskey.

Still, perhaps the white man would be willing to gamble away even more of his whiskey.

The Shoshone smiled.

Besides whiskey, maybe the white man had some cards too.

No reason either one of them had to be lonely ever again.

Not with a deck of cards, and enough whiskey.

5

September 1868

JONAH HOOK SENSED it, felt it to his marrow. Someone was watching him. But who, and why, his hunger-numbed mind refused to sort out.

For the better part of a day now he had known. There were subtle signs that only time in the wilderness can teach a man. Something nagging made him more than a little concerned that it might be one of Jubilee Usher’s men who had doubled back, coming wide around to see about rubbing out the man stalking the Danite trail.

Then the rain had come, sooner than expected, the storm racing faster than even Jonah could have figured it would. Caught out in the open when its first explosive dance started over the sun-baked plains, he shuddered beneath the thunderous cacophony of raindrops hammering the hardened ground like the echo of a thousand lead balls rattling inside a steel drum. It seemed as if the sky itself reverberated with the chorus of that driving rain, mirroring its pounding of the thirsty land and that single man struggling along beneath the onslaught of the skies.

Forcing himself to push on until he finally gave up, Jonah pulled his two horses into the willows beside the Sweetwater. He remembered the Sweetwater, with thoughts cured three winters over, time served in the Yankee army, protecting that telegraph wire from the Sioux and Cheyenne. This season of the year those warrior bands were all far to the north, hunting most like. Nary a sign of anything for the last three days now on his ride coming west out of Laramie.

Quickly he had tied off the animals, then dragged saddle and packs from their backs, letting them graze on the sun-stunted grasses back in a copse of alder where they would be less likely seen. He hurriedly made it look as if he were going to spend the night right there, then slipped off among the willow as if he were going to relieve himself, with one hand tugging his britches down over his hip as he went.

But once behind the thick growth of alder, Jonah rebuckled his belt and stuffed his shirttail back in his pants, squatting beneath some overhanging branches, where he gently parted the drying leaves with the barrel of his Winchester repeater. He waited, watching across the stream. To his right lay his campsite and the plunder he hoped would be bait enough to draw in the sneaky bastard dogging his backtrail.

He fought the sleep struggling to overtake him as the rain hammered the ground at his side, battering the leaves above, soaking his old hat that served as little protection. Jonah shuddered, growing chilled to the bone, and tried desperately to keep his eyes open.

“Keep ’em moving,” he told himself, remembering the words of Sweete and Bridger about sentries who had tired and fallen asleep because they had not kept their eyes moving. Staring at one thing too long proved deadly when a man was weary. Such a fool woke up too late—finding himself out of the frying pan and into the fire—if he woke up at all.

There came a rustle of movement to his left, along the creek bank, on the far side. Then a half-dozen birds took to the wing noisily, startling Jonah as he whirled the repeater about.

In the deepening silence that followed their frightened departure, Hook reasoned that no white man was going to make a successful sneak on him. All he had to do was wait and watch his campsite. That was the place the backtracker was surely headed. Likely the man had come across the river where the birds had taken wing and was moving downstream on the near bank, making for Jonah Hook’s camp.

The wet ground made it hard to hear a thing, and the sodden air didn’t carry a sound well at all. Two marks against him, Jonah brooded.

“Damn,” he muttered as more of the cold rain spilled from the hat brim down his collar.

He was sitting in a cold puddle of it now, yet he dared not move. His stalker was likely drawing close. He held his breath a moment, listening, straining against the rain for sound. His eyes must be deceiving him. He’d be damned, but it sounded as if someone were already in his camp, rummaging through his packs.

Try as he might, Jonah could not see a soul. As well as he had chosen this spot, for some reason he still could not see anyone rustling the oiled canvas. But, plain as sun, Hook could hear the sound.