How he had prayed for sleep to come soothe him as his fevered mind dwelt on nothing else but those five columns that would converge on the Llano Estacado to effect the final cleanup of the southern plains before winter set in. Major William R. Price was said to be marching east along the Canadian River out of Fort Union in New Mexico with eight companies of the Eighth Cavalry to effect a junction with Colonel Nelson Miles.
Lieutenant Colonel George P. Buell, leading four troops of the Ninth U.S. Negro Cavalry and two troops from the Tenth, along with two companies of the Eleventh Infantry and thirty scouts, was moving northwest across the Brazos from Fort Griffin, Texas.
Lieutenant Colonel John W. “Black Jack” Davidson was leading six troops of his Tenth U.S. Negro Cavalry, three companies of the Eleventh Infantry, and forty-four scouts west from Fort Sill.
On south of the austere caprock of the Staked Plain, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie was probing north out of Fort Concho at the head of his column comprising the largest prong of the attack: eight companies of his battle-tough Fourth Cavalry, four more of the famous buffalo soldiers from the Tenth Cavalry, one company from the Eleventh Infantry, in addition to some thirty scouts.
Then there was Colonel Nelson A. Miles himself, who was marching southwest at the van of eight troops of the Sixth Cavalry, four companies of the colonel’s own Fifth Infantry, along with one Parrot ten-pounder and two Gat-ling guns.
It boggled Jonah’s mind to think that those five columns made for more than three thousand soldiers converging on the ancient buffalo ground of the Kiowa and Comanche. The war those hostiles had started with the white man would soon be over, every man was saying. Only a matter of weeks now. Then he thought of a bitch in heat, and all the town dogs yammering around her, tails up and whipping with great excitement. That female finally left with nowhere to run—only to turn and snap back at the frenzied pack.
Sure enough, the army was going to go out and give those red heathens a bellyful of war. Whip the lords of the southern plains back to their reservations. That, or wipe them off the earth.
At sunrise the next morning, Lockhart turned their noses west again for another swing across the North Fork of the Red River. With this second summer of horrid drought, no man could say he relished the thought of more miles and saddle galls, riding all day through the stifling dust and searing heat to find nothing more than a parched pucker of ground where they had expected to find a water hole to slake the thirst of their animals. No water, and only stunted, sun-parched grass to offer those lathered horses.
With a vengeance summer had gripped the plains in its dry and lifeless paw, refusing to release the land. Until the second week of September, when the skies clouded, frothed, then boiled over, drenching the thirsty killing ground.
But with the rains came a whole new set of problems. Now the horses had trouble pulling each hoof out of the thick red gumbo that sucked at man and beast alike. Day and night the thunder rolled, rattling like dice bones in a horn cup. Storms that gave the men little relief, and no time for any of them to dry out. They slept wet and cold, if they slept at all. They rode soaked to the skin, shivering clear to the marrow, teeth chattering as the first winds of autumn hissed out of the west with a wiry whine, hurrying before them those whispered hints of winter.
Somewhere beneath this same low sky, he repeatedly told himself, his two boys slept and ate. And rode, prisoners of the Kwahadi. Just out of reach. Somewhere out there in all this tangle of creeks and streams and river systems, this land haunted by the holdout Comanche. He had to remind himself that they walked beneath this same sky. Under this same unforgiving sky.
Jonah grew thinner still. Hard for a man to keep his appetite about him when there was little in the way of cooked food to eat. Few fires allowed, by order of Captain Lockhart. So instead Jonah fed himself on his renewed hopes. Those, and his fervent prayers.
Beneath that unforgiving sky, filled horizon to horizon with slate-colored sheets of bone-numbing rain, Jonah Hook prayed for his boys harder than he had in the six years since he last left Fort Laramie behind him.
Prayed he would find them both before the army cornered Quanah Parker.
“The tracks of our herd will serve as the bait,” explained the gray-eyed war chief. “Kinzie cannot resist the chance to follow so wide a trail.”
