Black Hills (9781101559116) (12 page)

Cormac stepped out from behind the trees. “Go on, big boy,” he said. “Be on your way.” Before the words were out of his mouth, the deer was gone. His muscles were like tightly coiled springs suddenly released. His first leap was every bit as magnificent as he. Cormac listened to it crashing through the brush. He really didn't need meat as badly as he thought.

He rode through the night. Although the moon came up less full than the night before, there was still plenty of light with which to see well. They startled a few night creatures out scavenging for supper, and a couple of beavers waddling toward a stream scurried for cover, scolding him as he passed for disturbing them.

The sun came up right on time, its warm rays more than welcome. The saying, “It's always darkest before the dawn,” could also be said as, “It's always coldest before the dawn.” He decided riding at night is only fun for a short time. He would have to get through the day with a couple of catnaps so he would sleep when night came. Cormac stopped for breakfast and coffee—lots of coffee—in a hilltop grove of trees. Sitting on the sunny side of one of the trees after finishing his breakfast, leaning back and enjoying the sun with no particular place to go and no particular time to get there, Cormac let himself drift off to sleep.

Lop Ear woke him with a soft whinny. If they were going to be traveling companions, they were going to have to have a talk about Lop Ear waking him up all the time. Checking the position of the sun, he realized that sleeping so long had killed the morning and scared the heck out of noon. He finished off the coffee cold, left some bread for the camp-robbing jays, and they got on their way. He guided Lop Ear into the arroyo at the bottom of the hill and followed it all the way around the next hill before finding a way out. Skirting a rock outcropping, they topped out into a campsite with a small herd of cattle being held by three riders. A fourth rider was throwing a loop around a calf. Resting in the fire was an instrument Cormac had heard described as being used by rustlers to change brands. It was called a running iron. He could see at a glance that these men were changing a double P-Bar brand to a double R-Bar.

“Oh, for Pete's sake,” he told Lop Ear and Horse. “I don't care what they're doin', but the least they could do is keep an eye open for travelers. How dumb can they be?” He started the big gray back into the arroyo.

“Hold it right there!” A man in a sheepskin coat almost identical to his own stepped out of some thick bushes next to the camp, holding up his pants with one hand and covering Cormac with a gun in his other. Nope, not too bright, doing what he had obviously been doing not twenty-five feet from where they would be eating.

“We'll just see who's dumb here. You sit right still and just maybe I won't shoot you. And that's a big maybe.” He was long getting along in years, as was the pistol in his hand, but the steady manner in which he held that pistol spoke of more than a casual relationship.

“Look,” Cormac said, “I really don't give a hoot what's going on here. I'm not interested in other people's problems. I'm just traveling through. I have no idea who the Double P-Bar belongs to, and I don't care to. I have no interest in you or your friends or those cattle. So I'll just go on my way, and you can keep right on doin' what you're doin'.”

Cormac nudged his heels into Lop Ear, and the horse obliged by stepping forward.

“If your horse takes another step, he'll be missing a rider.”

The tone in the man's voice suggested Cormac would do well to pay it attention. They stopped.

“Hey, boys!” the gunman yelled out, and the other three came on the run to rein in beside him. “He just rode up out of the arroyo while I was doing my business in the bushes. One of you boys keep him covered while I fasten my britches.”

“Damnit, Willard,” said a cowboy in a black ten-gallon hat. “Use your head for something besides a hat rack, will ya? I told you not to do that so close to camp. I don't want to smell that while I'm eating.”

To Cormac, he said, “What are you doin' here, boy?”

“Mostly wishin' I was someplace else,” Cormac answered. “I was just trying to explain to your friend that I'm just passin' through. I couldn't care less what you fellows are doing. I don't know anybody around here—don't care to. Now, if you'll just holster that hog leg, I'll slip back into that arroyo and move on outta here, and you fellows can finish up what you're doin'.”

“I'm afraid it's not that simple, young friend,” Black Hat answered. “You stumbled in here, and now you've seen us. We'll have to deal with that.”

A long, tall drink of water with a beard to match said, “You're goin' to have to kill him, Luke. We can't be leavin' no witnesses behind us.”

The last rustler to join the group was about Cormac's age.

“I didn't agree to any killin',” he said, angrily. “You said we was just gonna run off a few cattle. You said nobody was gonna get hurt. He already told us he ain't gonna tell anybody. Let's just let him go. We can finish the brandin' and go on our way.”

Black Hat had already made up his mind. “We can't trust him. He'll say anything now just to get away from here, but once he's away it'll be a different story.”

Cormac's pa had told him about Indians who controlled their horses through signals with their heels, and he had spent a good deal of time training Lop Ear to do the same. He would pull his reins to the left and nudge his right flank with his heel. Lop Ear eventually got the idea and would let himself be guided in this manner. With a nudge on his right side, he stepped left. A nudge on his left moved him to the right.

Cormac nudged the horse's left side, and he obliged by stepping right, bumping into Horse, who had come up to stand beside them. “Whoa, Lop Ear,” Cormac said, making a show of pulling up on the reins he was holding in his left hand while his right was reaching under the canvas flap covering the pack that Horse was carrying and coming out with the scattergun. He neck-reined Lop Ear to the left and swung the scattergun around, cocking both barrels in the same motion.

If it hadn't been such a serious moment, Cormac would have laughed at the looks on their faces when those double barrels came around at them, but the trick was chancy and anything could happen. He was ready.

“Now, you fellows just take it easy. I would hate to have this thing go off accidentally. If you all will just lay your guns down carefully, I'll just point ole Lop Ear out of here and we'll part company.”

“Well, that's not likely gonna happen,” said Black Hat. “There's four of usn's and only one of you, and you're just a pipsqueak kid.”

“Well,” Cormac mimicked him, “that may very well be, and I can certainly see where you might be inclined to think that way, but it would be a mistake on your part. You see, I believe I'm holdin' the difference right here. It's a ten-gauge loaded with double-ought buck and don't care a whit how old I am. If I pull these triggers, it'll take two of you, maybe even three of you, right out of them there saddles. In addition to that, there is a pistol here that I can get into action as quick as I did this scattergun. I just might get all of you.”

Cormac paused to let them chew on that before going on. “Now, this is your game,” he said slowly and clearly. “If you shoot me, this scattergun is goin' to go off, but you all just call it as you see it. If you want, you fellows just go ahead and cut loose, and I'll do the same; when we're done, we'll count score.”

Well, they were not what one would call happy rustlers. Truth be told, they were looking kinda down in the mouth, but there was Black Hat, still considering it—he made the wrong decision. The wrinkles around his eyes shifted, and Cormac started taking up the tension on the triggers.

“Wait!” cried the young one, who had wanted to let Cormac leave in the first place. He was on one of the middle horses and sure to get hit if Cormac fired. “Just wait a damn minute! That's the kid I was telling you about. I was in River City when he killed three men attacking a girl, and I heard the sheriff say he had blown the heads plumb off four men who had killed his family. The Sheriff also said he did it with one shot from a ten-gauge shotgun, and unless I miss my guess, it's that one right there he's got pointed at us right now.”

Black Hat paled, and the wrinkles around his eyes changed again.

“Okay, friend.” His voice was strained, and Cormac noticed he had dropped the “young” from the title. “You made a believer out of me. Now, how do we get out of this?”

Cormac let them wait a long minute without speaking. Gray Beard, who had an end position, started edging his horse to the side.

Keeping his gun leveled where it was, Cormac nodded at him and told Black Hat, “That horse movin' makes me a bit nervous. If he takes one more step, ole Betsy here is going to start talking to y'all, and I doubt you'll care much for the conversation.”

“For God's sake, Fuller, sit still! Those scatter barrels are pointed right beside my face!” Black Hat exclaimed, without turning his head.

Then Cormac told them, “I know I'm not going to shoot you, unless you make me. If I wanted to do that, it woulda already been done. However, I'm not so sure of y'all. So if you fellows will just drop your guns on the snow, get off your horses, and stand over by the fire with your hands in the air, I'll be able to watch you as I ride away, and that's just what I'll do.”

The young one spoke up again, “Let's do it, Blackie. He don't look to me like the type who would shoot an unarmed man. Besides, if we shoot him, that there gun of his is gonna go off, and I don't want to be anywhere in the same territory in front of it when it does.”

“All right, all right,” agreed Blackie, “I'm puttin' down my gun. You just keep your finger light on that trigger.” He stuffed his gun into its holster and took the big black hat off to wipe the sweatband. From the moment he had heard about the four heads blown to bits, the rustler had lost interest in this situation and was just waiting for someone to give him an out.

When they were all standing by the fire, Cormac told them to open their coats so he could see if there were any belt guns: there were not. Keeping “Betsy” covering them, he searched their saddlebags and found a couple more guns and then took their rifles from their scabbards. They kept standing still like good fellows. They had a lot of respect for Betsy. Betsy hadn't been Betsy until that minute, but he thought she would remain Betsy from then on; he kinda liked the way it sounded. Betsy and GERT. Quite a pair, they were.

Once he was certain he had all their guns, Cormac exchanged the scattergun for his rifle and nudged Lop Ear away from Horse. Lop Ear was gun trained, he knew, and would stand still for what Cormac was about to do; he had no such confidence in Horse.

“I want to show you boys somethin',” he told them. “Look off over there. You see that big ole jack?” He pointed about seventy-five yards out at a jackrabbit sitting up looking around. “I'm going to fire twice. The first time is to get him movin'; the second will be to stop him again.”

Black Hat snorted.

“Ain't never been no man alive could hit a runnin' jack with a rifle.”

Cormac snapped a quick shot, kicking up snow a few feet to the right of the rabbit, so he would run to the left, away from the herd, and the jackrabbit took off like he had a sudden urge to go see Texas. A rabbit's hind legs are long, strong, and made for jumping. With his first leap, he sailed about ten feet and hit the ground runnin'. There are few things as fast as a fully grown jackrabbit, especially if he is frightened, and watching one in motion is worth seeing. A rabbit just running to get somewhere will mix in a jump or hop up in the air every now and again to look around. That's the reason a rabbit is said to hop. They will run a few steps and hop, covering six or eight feet in a single leap, then run some more.

When hunting them, just for the fun of it, Cormac would sometimes try to hit one in mid-leap. The first time he had tried, he missed, and the second time, he hit it again in the same place. His pa had heard the shots, and when he asked Cormac what he had shot, Cormac had to apologize for wasting ammunition, and told him what he had been attempting to do, promising not to do it again.

His pa wasn't one for wasting ammunition, but he had a way of surprising Cormac from time to time, and he surprised Cormac that day when he told him to keep trying. He said his eyes weren't good enough anymore to do it, but Cormac might be able to, and he would be proud to see it. Cormac had eventually gotten where he could hit them in the air maybe eight or nine times out of ten. His pa had smiled big the first time he had seen it happen, said he was proud as a peacock. Cormac didn't know what a peacock was, but he liked the sound of it.

Mostly, though, Cormac would just put them in his sights, lead them a little, pull the trigger, and that was that, or, if he had to make absolutely sure of the shot, he would put two fingers against his tongue and let out a shrill whistle. Most rabbits will sit up and look around to see where the noise is comin' from, making an easy shot, but the object of this demonstration was not to kill a rabbit; it was to make a point.

Cormac sight-tracked this jackrabbit until he got up to speed, all the while keeping track of his new acquaintances out of the corner of his eye. A western man had a lot of respect for anyone who shoots well, and many shooting contests happen around camps when things got boring. Boys will be boys, his mother would have said; these men were just such boys. Their attention divided between the rabbit and his rifle, they were not about to do anything to ruin the shot.