Winter Rain

Hook found himself instinctively gazing up at the night sky paling as the moon fell far in the west. He swallowed hard, brooding on the loss of his own sons. Lord—the two of them took at once. From what Shad Sweete had told him, they was as good as gone now: in the hands of comancheros, spirited all the way south to Mex country. Death’d likely be a better fate than that, he figured. And what of Gritta? Her fate no better than that of …

Jonah forced himself to squeeze that off, like stopping the stream of warm, creamy milk from the cow’s udder back home, and looked over at the Shoshone instead.

“The Brule, they’d be cruel to your … your woman. And your daughter?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately. “No,” he replied a moment later. “After all time gone from land of the Shoshone—the two now Lakota. My woman, she get old.” Then he made a cradling motion down at his belly. “Maybe she carry many Brule baby. Make many Lakota warrior.”

Jonah watched as the Shoshone was seized with a spasm of grief, something sour in his throat that was as quickly swallowed down.

“My girl,” Two Sleep continued, his words with a rocky edge to them as he spoke, “she have Brule babies too now.”

“You don’t know … can’t be sure.”

He nodded his head so emphatically, it shocked Hook.

“I know. The Lakota take women—make them Brule. Make Lakota warriors in their bellies. Marry and have many babies. Or … or the women they kill quick.”

“Your … the women—would they fight the Brule? Or would they have the Lakota babies?”

Two Sleep rubbed his eyes with his gnarled knuckles, as if some sandy grit were troubling them. “They gone,” he said finally, brushing one palm quickly across the other.

“Dead?”

“Dead,” the warrior answered.

“You mean: they’re good as dead.”

“They have babies for Lakota fathers,” Two Sleep agreed, “a bad thing for Shoshone woman.”

As good as dead, Jonah thought to himself. A woman of one tribe forced to give birth to sons of an enemy tribe—she was as good as dead to her own people.

“She wait. They wait for me,” Two Sleep continued after a moment. “Wait for first winter. A second and a third winter. They see no one riding to come for them. Maybe they dead now. Maybe after all winters they say Two Sleep not come for them—they carry Lakota babies. They come to be Lakota mothers. They not Shoshone no more. They be Lakota now. They forget Two Sleep.”

“But you never forgot them.”

Two Sleep dragged a hand beneath his nose hurriedly. “I never go find them. Afraid. No man go with me. I was young, strong in seasons ago. Not now. Too many winters gone. Other warriors give up oh Two Sleep. So now I afraid to go.”

Hook watched the Shoshone slowly drop his head on his forearms that lay cradled across his knees, hiding his face. There arose no sound from the warrior. Nothing to betray him but the slight, silent tremble as Two Sleep shuddered with the wracking sobs.

It grew clear to Jonah as he reached out, knowing nothing else to do but to touch the man’s quaking shoulder.

“After I told you my story … you up and decided you’re coming with me—’cause you want to help me get my family back. That it, Two Sleep?”

He raised his face, eyes glistening, but cheeks still dry as the flaky soil in this high land. “I come to help you. Too late to help me. Too late to help my woman. Help my daughter. Too late now help my sons gone far on the Star Road fourteen winters. But … still time for you, Hook.”

“Yes, Two Sleep. There is time for me.” He barely got the words out, choking on the unfamiliar taste of sentiment. It was something he had not often savored in his brooding past. But here, with this old Indian, in the cold of this autumn night somewhere near the windswept continental divide as they waited to pit themselves against six gunmen, Jonah Hook felt again that unaccustomed warmth of human kindness.

By riding along with the white man, Two Sleep was trying to find a way of forgiving himself after all this time. After living so long as a failure—with the fear, the terror, the utter shame of never trying. Happened that a man crawled far enough, long enough around the whiskey cup, he just might find himself reaching the handle.

Two Sleep got to his feet, clutching his thin blanket about his shoulders. “I brave enough now, brave for all the days I not brave enough to go find them. I ride with you—so it make things right for me.”

With the Shoshone finally expressing it, Jonah knew the warrior was right. By riding along to help Hook, Two Sleep was somehow righting his medicine, his spiritual power long gone stale and rancid—long gone the coward’s way of hiding down in the white man’s whiskey and gambling and the emptiness of a coward’s sanctuary. But for some reason Jonah Hook had come along to offer a way, the only way, the warrior could make his medicine strong once more. By helping another man put his family back together.