Black Hills (9781101559116) (11 page)

A gift that Lainey had made for him came to mind, and just before leaving, he tiptoed back into the house to get it: an arrowhead she had found and made into a neck-charm with a strip of rawhide she had braided. Cormac had taken it off while getting cleaned up to go into town that morning and forgotten to put it back on. Pausing for one last look, he sighed, and silently closed the door.

“Our guiding star,” as his pa had called it, was high in the sky when Cormac stopped on the hilltop overlooking their valley. Cormac had a moment of hesitation.

“It's not ours anymore,” he said aloud.
It's not mine anymore either . . . It's theirs. Oh, the heck with it
, he thought. He was eighteen years old. Maybe now was the time to go see some of the sights travelers had been telling them about.

“Well, Lop Ear, that's about enough dramatics,” he said. “Let's us go say good-bye to Mother, Pa, and Becky, and point our noses west and go see what it's all about anyway.” The grulla followed willingly to the gravesites on her hackamore.

The crosses didn't seem to be enough. The names he had so carefully inscribed on them now seemed so inadequate. It had seemed like enough at the time. But no longer. There should be something telling what wonderful people they were, telling how his pa had always worked so hard to love and take care of his family, and how his mother had worked in the fields by his side all day, cooked their favorite meals, made them clothes, and sewn special gifts for each of them of an evening, and how Becky had always taken the time to play with him when he was little and tell him stories. Three crosses with just their names wasn't enough, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

The horses stood quietly beside him somehow knowing something was wrong. Horse blew and Lop Ear shook his head. Cormac mounted, and they set out at an easy lope. Lop Ear could keep that up all day and put a lot of miles behind them, and Cormac wanted some miles behind them by morning. The events of the day had left him keyed up, and he wasn't the least bit tired. It would catch up with him, no doubt, but for the time being he was enjoying the night ride. There was a strange mixture of sadness for the life he was leaving behind. He would miss the Schwartzes. After a bit he added silently
and Lainey
. But at the same time, he felt an excitement for what lay ahead. The fate and shaping of Cormac Lynch was now in his own hands. His mother and pa had laid the groundwork, teaching him to be honest and God fearin', and they gave him a strong work ethic.

His pa had said, “The foundation of a good life is hard work.” His mother had taught him to read and to learn. Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz had continued to teach him by example, and he had to admit that he had learned a lot from Lainey. She was a fine person, mighty notional, but a fine person. She believed the people of the world could be divided into two groups, those who were Irish, and those who wanted to be. Yes, he would most definitely miss Lainey. They had become very close, until they had begun to fight. Cormac could not understand it and regretted the fighting and arguing. The feelings he had been having while her head lay on his shoulder were something to ponder.
I wish
, he thought. A lot of good wishing would do. What was it that the gravelly old traveler had said a couple of years ago when Cormac had told him he wished his parents were still alive? “If wishes were horses, all beggars would ride. If cow turds were doughnuts, I'd eat till I died.”

The air was crisp and bitterly cold with a full moon looking down from above. His pa had made up stories for Cormac about the face on the moon, and he had never been quite sure when his pa was truth-tellin', or when he was making things up. His pa had once told him that people sometimes acted strange when there was a full moon. Pa had also teased Cormac's mother by tellin' him, when she was within ear shot, that that was the reason women liked to get men out during a full moon, because the men would become crazy and propose marriage.

That night, the big old full moon was shining brightly on the snow, reflecting from it and adding a special quality to the night, making it more like a soft day. Many a night, as a small boy, Cormac had played outside in just such light until being called in by his mother. It was soothing, something familiar to travel with. Not wanting to be sky-lighted, he skirted the hilltops, and it allowed him to see into the surrounding valleys. He doubted anyone else was out at this hour, but if he was, others also might be.

The part of the country he was leaving behind was dotted with occasional lakes and rolling hills that one of his mother's books had explained were the result of glaciers passing through about a zillion years ago. Cormac could never quite grasp the concept of where all that ice had come from in the first place, but the book said it had totally changed the landscape—cut the tops off hills and used them to fill in valleys, moved around giant boulders and deposited them elsewhere, and created lakes—making him wonder what the country had looked like before.

Somewhere in front of him was the two-day-ride-wide Rocking R cattle ranch, after that, he needed to drop south to get around the badlands, and then go west through a couple of other large ranches. That would take him through a corner of Nebraska, then a turn right through Wyoming, and he would be on his way “out West.”

The dawn was long in coming, but slowly the sky began to lighten in the east; it was going to be another blue-sky day. He never tired of the vastness of a big sky over the rolling hills, no matter if the hills were covered with snow or grass. To Cormac, the sight was always tremendous.

Horse apples on the trail had called his attention to the tracks of another horse that had passed through earlier, and now they were joined by a third following the same route. The moonlight was reflecting from a thin coating of ice in the bottom of the tracks, indicating that the sun had melted the blown-in surface snow and it had refrozen. He figured the other riders to be about a day in front of him.

His stomach had been doing its bear-in-the-woods imitation for some time and was becoming more insistent, and the countryside had been changing, with the hills becoming larger with more trees. A little ahead and off to the side ran a stream with a thick grove of birch trees, looking like a good place to grab a bite and bed down a while.

He had been up for more than twenty-four hours, eight of which had been spent in the saddle. He had killed three men, alienated the only people who meant anything to him, and given away the family homestead. That seemed like more than enough for one day. A little food and sleep was sounding almighty good.

Judging by the tracks, yet another rider coming from the south had joined the others. The area was beginning to get downright crowded. Cormac had only ridden about twenty-five miles and already there were four people in the neighborhood. What would anyone be doing riding in this weather if it wasn't necessary? The other riders had also veered off toward these trees. Well, there was nothing unusual about that. Most good campsites were frequented frequently, or should it be frequently frequented? What would his mother think about using those two like words together? Likely, it was some kind of a double-grammar somethin' or 'nother.

The stand of birch was fair in size and too thick to see into. Cormac pulled off his heavy mittens, flexed his fingers a few times to limber them up, and unbuttoned his sheepskin coat. He worked the action of his pistol to make sure it hadn't frozen and there was a cartridge in the chamber of his rifle before laying it across the saddle in front of him. He believed the other riders to be at least a day ahead of him but had no wish to find out by surprise that he had been mistaken.

Wary of trouble and riding loose in the saddle, Cormac Lynch watched Lop Ear's ears as they followed the tracks into the grove. If the horses smelled company, their ears would perk up to listen for accompanying sounds. The tracks led him to a campsite with a ring of fire-blackened stones below a forked branch propped up to hang the handle of a bucket to heat water or a coffee pot. His bet was on the coffee pot, but it may have been wishful thinking. A cup of horseshoe coffee was sounding pretty darn good.

His pa used to tell him, “The way to make a good cup of coffee is to throw a handful of coffee into some water and boil it a good while, and then throw in a horseshoe. If the horseshoe sinks, add more coffee, and boil it longer.”

He missed his pa, he surely did. His mother and Becky, too. John Lynch had loved to make up poems with which to tease Cormac's mother and also loved to make up stories. A poem came to mind that his pa had made up while petting one of the cats that hung around during milking, waiting to get sprayed in the face with a stream of fresh, warm milk.

Without slowing his petting, he had just come out with it:

Cormac hadn't known what it meant, doubted his pa had, but it was fun to listen to. His pa had been a man worth remembering. He wasn't book-read, but his brain was mighty quick.

Cormac was careful to not mess up the signs until he had a chance to study them. According to the droppings, trash, cigarette butts, and the like, two people had waited here for two days. One was a heavy man of medium height with well-worn boot heels making deep tracks, and the other, a man not much on wide but his mother had done a good job for him on tall, walking with large strides. His boots did not sink deeply into the snow, and according to the yellow letters in the snowdrift, his initials were C.S. Cormac could still think of no good reason for this many people to be out in this kind of cold.

Recent travelers had spoken of rustlers becoming more prevalent as more folks moved west. There would always be people too lazy to work, living off the efforts of others. He felt sure the riders he was following were up to no good, and rustling was the only thing that fit. Well and good. It didn't affect him, wasn't anything for him to worry about. It was someone else's problem. Just keep him out of it. He had seen all he wanted of bad guys.

His pa always told him, “Take care of your horse first.” He removed the saddle and gear from the horses, and then, with a cut-off shovel brought along for just such a purpose, broke the ice from the stream and cleared an area of snow down to the brown frozen grass underneath for the horses to eat. After they had time to roll and drink, he slipped hackamores on them with ropes long enough to let them graze, gave them a quick brushing, and checked their shoes for stones. A small stone lodged in a shoe could cripple a horse and lay it up for days, if not weeks.

That chore finished, he built a double-handful-sized fire and had two large cups of coffee to wash down some thick-sliced bacon along with some biscuits Lainey had made. Mrs. Schwartz had taught her well, although Cormac liked to tease her that she couldn't cook. He rubbed the back of his head while he remembered the previous Christmas. She and Mrs. Schwartz had split up kitchen duties and Lainey's job was to cook the goose Mr. Schwartz had shot the day before.

“Loooks like we both ready to put on the feed bag,” he remembered Mr. Schwartz saying when the two of them had sat down at the table while the women were still setting it. “Which you like betta? The white meat or dark meat.”

Knowing Lainey had just left the kitchen area and would be walking behind him close enough to hear, Cormac had answered, “It don't much matter. If Lainey's cookin' it, it's all gonna be dark meat.”

She had made his ears ring with a smack to the back of his head. But both women could cook up a storm, and he was going to miss that. He was not looking forward to living off his own cooking. He had woefully little experience in that department, and he would miss picking on Lainey.

Using his slicker as a ground cloth, Cormac spread his bedroll and crawled in. Lop Ear would sound the alarm if they had visitors. The ground was icy cold and hard beneath him. His pa had taught him how to deal with that, but he did not want to spend time building a wide fire, letting it burn down, and then scraping it away to the warm earth on which to put his bedroll. He was tired enough that he didn't think the cold was going to bother him much. It didn't.

Using his saddle for a pillow, he pulled the blanket over his head, allowing his warm breath to act as a heater, and was asleep immediately, only to wake right up again thinking he had forgotten something. Actually it was two somethings. After getting Lop Ear's bridle and stuffing it into the front of his coat to warm the steel bit for the morning, he pulled his gun, and with it in hand, let the lights go out again.

It was the latter part of dusk when Lop Ear snorted Cormac awake. He came out of his bedroll in a hurry. It scared him to realize he had slept so sound and heard nothing all day. His pa had taught him to sleep light on the trail.

Some brush popped. The light was poor, but he could just make out a horse coming through the trees. He drew back behind four trees growing closely together, his gun still in his hand. The horse turned out to be a large deer. The winter had been very cold with an overabundance of snow, forcing animals to range far from their home territories for food. His camp was downwind from the deer, and the deer had not yet caught their scent.

Some fresh meat to begin his trip would be good. He cocked the pistol inside his heavy coat to muffle the sound and braced his arm against the tree, aiming for where the deer's head was going to be.

The unsuspecting deer moseyed out of the heavy brush into the clearing to stop there, standing dead still, suddenly suspicious, with its head held high, smelling the breeze. It was a beautiful eight-point buck, bigger than Cormac had expected, and his gun-sight was pointing dead center at the white blaze on its forehead. All that was necessary was to let the hammer fall. The deer was magnificent.