Black Hills (9781101559116) (13 page)

When a rabbit is afraid of something, it doesn't fool around none, and this one wasn't fooling around one bit. No hopping was this one doing. He was running flat out on his way to someplace else. Just when Cormac was about to pull the trigger, the rabbit saw something ahead not to its liking and veered sharply. Cormac compensated; then pulled his sight out a little in front of it. “Squeeze softly,” his pa's voice was saying, “don't jerk the trigger, squeeze it gently.” Cormac squeezed it gently, and the rabbit rolled sideways, ass-end over appetite, coming to rest motionless in a snowbank.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Black Hat burst out. “I wouldn't a believed that if I hadn't seen it, but why the hell did you do it?”

“Because I want you fellows to realize that what I shoot at, I hit. Now we're all going to mount up and herd those cattle back to where they belong. I'll bring up the rear where I can keep an eye on you, and should any of you develop a sudden taste for far-off places, you're just not going to make it.

“It's your responsibility to stay within my range. If I see any of you getting anywhere near the outer limits of the range of this rifle, I'm just going to figure that you are making a run for it, and ole GERT here is just gonna reach out and knock you right out of that saddle.”

“What the hell is going on? You said if we put down our guns, you were going to ride away and leave us be. You said you didn't care what we were doing.”

“Ah, now you believe me. Before, you wouldn't, but now that the tables are turned, all of a sudden you want to believe me. Well, when I first came out of the arroyo, I didn't, and if you would have let me be, I would have done the same for you, but you didn't. You had to be tough guys and were going to kill me. That sort of thing has a tendency to change a fella's perspective, so now we're just going to take these cattle home and let the folks they belong to decide what to do with you. Now, that's enough talking. Get on your horses and let's get started.”

“What about our stuff here in camp?” asked Gray Beard.

“You'll just have to come back and get it, if you're able. If you're not, it won't much matter. Now, let's get going.”

“How are we supposed to know what the range is on your rifle?”

“Now that there is a dilemma, ain't it?”

T
he double P-Bar belonged to one Paul Putnam, Cormac learned. They pulled within sight of the spread just before dusk. The ranch buildings were sitting on a rise in the center of a large flat land, giving a view of the surroundings several miles out. A well-kept white ranch house with a well-kept white outhouse, a well-kept white barn with a well-kept white corral, a well-kept white bunkhouse with its own well-kept white outhouse, all surrounded by a well-kept white rail fence; all in all, a well-kept spread.

The drive had been uneventful, nearly. After being on the trail a couple of hours, the young cowhand had suddenly turned his horse and took off running. Cormac pulled up GERT and put the sight in the center of his back. Before Cormac could squeeze off the shot, he saw a calf running out in front of the young rustler. How the calf had gotten that far out without him having seen it sooner didn't figure. Cormac kept the sights on the young man until he turned the calf and started back. The young cowhand looked across the herd at Cormac and waved.

Three or four miles later, it happened again. It was only after the young rustler neared some trees that would lead over a hill and out of sight that Cormac realized there was no calf in front of him this time. He was leaving the country. However, the young man had misjudged GERT's range; Cormac still had plenty of time to stop him. Cormac put the sight once more in the center of his back, and then raised it a few inches to allow for the distance.

He was a thinking man; Cormac had to give him that. He had set it up nicely, and now here he was, making a run for it. Cormac remembered that he had tried to talk the others out of killing him and held the shot.

“Ah, the hell with it, Lop Ear,” he said aloud. “I can't shoot everybody.”

As the runner entered the grove of trees, he looked back and waved his hat. With the drama having played out behind them, the other rustlers hadn't seen it. They didn't realize one of their group was missing until they arrived at the ranch and several riders rushed out to meet them. With puzzled expressions, the rustlers looked around the distance surrounding them, then at each other, and finally at Cormac, but they said nothing. Cormac pretended not to notice.
Let them wonder,
he thought.

He stuffed GERT back into its scabbard. When the P-Bar riders encircled them, he wanted no mistakes made about his intentions. Mr. Putnam readily accepted the facts, and to show his gratitude, invited Cormac to stay the night. Cormac was about to refuse when two of the riders rode up to sandwich Mr. Putnam, and he introduced Cormac to his daughters. They were both about Cormac's age, pretty and shapely with brown hair and matching eyes. They had a ways to go to match up with Lainey, most likely would never make it, but they were pretty nonetheless.

Well kept
, he thought. When it come to girl makin', Mr. Putnam had it all figured out. Maybe Cormac could stay one night after all. That he thought of Lainey before accepting puzzled him a mite.

After Mr. Putnam made the rustlers help re-brand the cattle, he intended to take them into town and turn them over to the sheriff. However, with the rustlers in easy hearing distance, he and his riders made big talk of having a hanging, but they were just funnin' at the rustler's expense.

The Putnams were a nice family. Mrs. Putnam was excited to have a guest to cook for and graciously accepted the rabbit he brought for the pot. A friendly woman who moved around her kitchen gracefully, it was easy to see from whom the daughters got their looks. The girls helped her some with the cooking and later with the cleanup, but were not as at home in the kitchen as their mother.

Outdoor girls both, they sat their saddles with the same grace and ease as their mother evidenced in the kitchen. Mrs. Putnam set a good table on a red-and-white checkered tablecloth. The dinner conversation was easy and listening to Mrs. Putnam's southern accent pleasant.

Although Cormac didn't believe it to be their normal seating arrangement, his eyes were very happy the girls were seated directly across the table from him. They were right easy to look at.

The Putnam girls were even friendlier than their parents: laughing, joking, teasing, and flirting with him while serving and clearing supper dishes. Both had dressed up nicely and were working hard to be friendly.

A little too hard, he thought when they laughed long at something he said that wasn't all that funny. From the look on Mr. Putnam's face, he had found the incident amusing. Their spread was miles from town and Cormac was of a mind that the girls lacked much male company for whom to show off. It occurred to Cormac that the hands were all a generation or two older, possibly an intentional act by Mr. Putnam. The girls had watched him like two cats about to catch one bird, and Cormac didn't figure that bird ought be him. The sun rose the next morning to find Cormac already on the trail an hour.

Before getting “out West,” Cormac first had to get across the Missouri River, a wide expanse of prairie, and around the Black Hills and the Badlands. Cormac had heard that the Missouri River ran wide, fast, and deep. Coming out of a thick grouping of spruce trees at the top of a hill, it was a thrilling sight to a country boy who had seen very little but the farm and the small town where they did their trading.

To date, the most exciting thing in his life had been the times they had been in town when the stagecoach came rolling in and sliding to a stop in front of the hotel with its whoops, whoas, and howdies. The arrival was followed by the hostler's changing of the team, while the passengers went next door to “Mom's Café,” usually for some of the stew or beans and cornbread for which “Mom” was famous.

Usually, by the time the team was changed and the traces that connected the horses to the stagecoach re-hooked, the passengers had finished eating, made their trips to the outhouse behind the hotel, and were filing out onto the walk, ready to board. It was a well-coordinated procedure, normally going off without a hitch. The townsfolk were used to it, but Cormac always found it exciting and fun to watch. Becky had shared it with him a time or two, but after that spent her time shopping with her mother.

“What do you think about that, guys?” Cormac asked the horses as they neared the river. “Quite a sight, don't ya think? I don't know how in the world we're goin' to get over it, though. It's so wide I doubt I could throw a rock to the other side, and look at how fast that log out there is movin'. Lord! That's a challenge, it surely is, but for now, it's near suppertime.”

“How about we camp here overnight and in the mornin' we head on downriver and see can we find some way to get to the other side? All in favor? Not talkin', huh? Okay then, I say we stop; you had your chance to vote. But let's back up away from this big ole river a bit. It's cold enough already, and I 'spect it's gonna get breezier and colder here by the water.”

It turned out to be a correct guess, though Cormac would rather have been wrong. By dark, the breeze was getting downright frigid. He chose a campsite beside a large boulder in a grove of tall, mature white spruce trees relatively free of snow. The boulder was as tall as he and six or eight feet wide, with a slight overhang on a flat side facing the down-river direction. Good sense told him any breeze would be moving downstream with the river, and the boulder would serve as a windbreak. He scraped together a bed of pine needles on which to put his bedroll and built a stone fire-ring in which he built a fire between his bed and the flat side of the boulder. The heat from the fire would reflect off the rock and back at his bedroll giving him a near doubled amount of heat.

There was plenty of deadfall wood to stack up on the far side of his bedroll that would allow him to feed the fire all through the night without getting out of bed. At the head side of his bedroll, he rolled a log on which to sit in front of the fire that extended all the way from his bedroll to the boulder. He warmed himself by the flames while smoking a couple cigarettes before slipping into his bedroll for the night.

Near on to get-up time, Cormac heard a noise he could not identify coming from the river. After slipping on his high-top farmer shoes, he made his way to the water. It was quite a sight in the waning moonlight. With massive amounts of water flowing silently passed, the river was unsettling to a non-swimmer, such as Cormac. It was awesome looking, yet powerful and deadly, and more than a little scary. Definitely not to be taken lightly.

The sounds he had heard were emanating from a very large shape coming down the middle of the river with a giant revolving wheel of some kind on one side and a big smokestack belching smoke into the sky. Some travelers a few months back had told them about riverboats, but he had never seen one. He guessed that's what this was, and the noise of whatever was driving it sounded strange in the middle of an otherwise quiet wilderness night.

The wind close to the water had a bite to it, making Cormac turn up his sheepskin collar and put his back to the breeze. He had picked up smoking cigarettes and dipping snuff from Mr. Schwartz. Although the trees in the area were mostly spruces, there were others bare of leaves for the winter, one of which he chose for a little wind protection, leaning his back against it while he smoked.

The flare of his match must have been observed by whoever was driving the boat as it was answered immediately by a tiny bleep of the whistle acknowledging that somebody knew he was there. Cormac quickly took a hard pull on his cigarette and made a circle in the darkness with the glow and got another tiny bleep: a friendly sound and response between two strangers on a dark night letting each know they weren't alone.

The big boat passing in the moonlight proved an impressive sight. Comin' all the way from Ireland, Lainey had traveled much more than he and told him there were many things “out there” that he hadn't seen. This was definitely one such thing. After a breakfast of bacon, biscuits, and coffee, he was having another smoke and watching the fire consume a large, dry chunk of wood before packing up. It had just fired a pocket of pitch and flared brightly when Lop Ear blew a warning. The horse was looking toward the river in the downstream direction.

“Thanks, boy,” Cormac called to him quietly, throwing his smoke into the fire and melting into the trees. Waiting for his eyes to clear from staring into the fire, he removed the hammer thong from his gun, loosened it in its holster, and unbuttoned his coat.

“Hello the camp.”