Black Hills (9781101559116) (18 page)

It was still some distance away but close enough to frighten them when the whistle blew. They reared up, nearly taking Cormac off the ground before he calmed them down. He could see the engineer looking straight at them when he blew the whistle again, laughing when it frightened the horses, making them jump and rear. “Numb-skulled dimwit,” said Cormac. Talking continually, he calmed them again and turned them to face the other direction while thinking he would like to talk to that engineer by hand.

E
ventually the train moved on as they heard the whistle of the riverboat. They made it onboard with no further incident, where Cormac refused a cabin in favor of staying with the horses below in what he had learned was called “the hold.” He didn't think they were going to like being down there when the boat began to move, and he was right.

They were all right once the boat was in motion, giving Cormac time the next day to go up on deck and watch the riverbanks and trees go by. Some people on the shore waved, and he waved back. After that, he sometimes was the first to wave at the shore people or those in small boats, and they waved back, mostly.

The sun was shining, creating an unusually warm day. Riding a paddle wheeler, as it was called, was a fun experience, somewhat like a party atmosphere with a lot of people standing and sitting wherever they found comfortable. A few people held glasses of different kinds of liquids, and a small group of musicians wearing red-and-white striped clothing had gathered on the deck near the front of the boat around a piano in transit, playing a fast-paced music some called Ragtime. He overheard a cheerful and smiling, happy-faced woman obviously having a good time, explaining to her frumpy husband, who obviously wasn't, that it was a fast-march tempo mixed with a syncopated work-song melody. From the look on her husband's face and his manner of treating her, he was a husband wishful of being her wasband.

A group of Indians camping on the bank backed away from the water as the boat drew closer. The captain had apparently caught sight of them first as he had the boat much closer to the opposite bank than previously, returning to the center of the river when the Indians were out of range. One of the Indians shot an arrow at them in protest, or just to see how close he could come. Cormac waved with exaggerated enthusiasm. No one waved back.

“Not a very friendly people, are they?” said a voice beside him. Cormac turned to see a middle-aged gentleman with gray mutton-chop sideburns reaching almost to his gray handlebar mustache above a gray goatee. He was dressed all in gray as well with a gray top hat and three-piece suit over a white shirt and gray bowtie. Cormac's eyes merely skimmed over him on the way to his companion. Holding his arm was an attractive, younger woman. Pretty and also well dressed in an elegant green dress with matching jacket over a frilly white blouse sporting an amulet on a black neckband and carrying a parasol, she was enjoying the attention she was receiving. She was quite attractive, Cormac thought, as long as she didn't have to compete with Lainey, especially if Lainey would have been wearing that green dress.

Cormac returned his attention to the speaker. “Nope,” he answered the man. “They don't seem to be. I think the captain purposely steered us away from them, but they didn't give me the feeling of wanting to be too close anyway. They probably heard of the Sultana.”

“What's the Sultana?”

“Steamboats have become pretty reliable,” the man answered as he lit a cigar, “but several have exploded, usually killing two or three hundred people. One working the Mississippi back in'65, the Sultana, killed more than eighteen hundred people when it exploded. Most were Union soldiers returning home after the war. Downright pity. They lived through the horrors of war only to get killed on their way home during peacetime. Now me, I fought for the Confederacy, but I still think it was a shame. Yes, sir. Damned shame, it was a right damned shame.”

Cormac allowed as how riding the riverboat had been every bit the fun experience he had thought it was going to be, and it had certainly solved his problem of how to get across the Missouri river, but it was time to get off. At the next stop, in Omaha, they did just that. Now, being south of both the Badlands and the Black Hills, according to the ticket agent, they could continue westward on a mostly straight line to the next city on his journey: Cheyenne, in Wyoming Territory.

“Those are right nice-looking horses you got there. What'll you take for them?”

The man speaking was standing beside a gracious carriage with a finely matched team and a driver sitting high on the seat waiting for the word to leave. Having just disembarked, a word he had heard used in the process seeming to mean getting off the boat, Cormac was leading the horses and walking to stretch his legs.

“No, thanks,” Cormac answered without slowing down. “Not for sale.”

“Everything is for sale,” the man called. “Name your price.”

“Not for sale,” Cormac reiterated.

“Hey! Wait a minute. Let's talk.”

Cormac did not want to wait a minute and continued walking. He heard the carriage before he saw it pull past and stop, blocking his way.

“Mister, I told you, these horses are not for sale. Now, would you please move your carriage so I can move along?”

“Everything is for sale. Now name your price. I want to buy your horses, and I'm offering to pay your price. Now don't be a dummkopf. Tell me how much I am going to have to pay.”

As tall as Cormac, with about ten years on him, broad-shouldered and accustomed to getting his way, the man looked fit and capable.

“Mister, look. This lop-eared gray horse belonged to my father. My father set store by this horse, and my father is dead now. This horse is not for sale for any amount of money. He and the grulla are friends, and she's not for sale either.”

Cormac turned to walk past him only to have the man grab his coat sleeves. “Look, Bucko. I'm not used to being put off. I make it a habit of getting what I want, and I want those horses.”

Eye to eye, they stared silently at each other.

“Well, you're not going to get 'em,” Cormac said finally, yanking his arm free and turning to leave. The man would not be shaken and again grabbed his arm. Pulling Cormac back, he smashed him hard in the face, just missing his nose. Cormac fell backward and staggered to his feet, rubbing his cheek. He pulled back to swing a roundhouse to the side of the man's head, but found himself instead on the ground again before he could swing. Cormac had no fighting experience; he had never been in a fight in his life. He kept getting up and getting knocked down, but he continued getting up anyway.

Presently, he remembered a wrestling move his pa had taught him. As he once again regained an upright position, the man had become overconfident and swung again, expecting the same results. Cormac sidestepped and grabbed the man's arm as it passed, turning to go with the punch and using his attacker's own momentum, he threw him head-first into the side of a passing carriage. As the man staggered back toward Cormac, Cormac realized he might not get another opportunity and put everything he had into a punch that snapped the man's head back and laid him out cold. Shaking his hand and flexing his fingers, he realized his thick mittens were pretty good for hitting.

“When he wakes up, tell him the horses are not for sale,” Cormac told the driver, an old black man grinning from ear to ear as he climbed down from his seat.

“Ya, suh, I surely will. May I shake ya hand, suh? I been hopin' for that for a long time. He runs over everybody. Thank you, suh. Thank ya very much.”

Cormac took his hand. “So this is civilization and that was a gentleman,” he answered. “Not the way my pa described it. I'd be obliged if you didn't tell him which way I went.” Cormac didn't want the episode to turn into gunplay, but there was not enough money in the world to buy those two horses.

“No, suh, I won't. Which way are you goin'?”

Cormac considered lying, but thought better of it in favor of trusting the old black gentleman. “West,” he answered.

“Ya, suh.” The old man beamed. “Thank you, suh, east it is.”

Cormac smiled his thanks. “You'll do, sir,” he told him. “You'll do.”

They left west out of town. Cormac had heard that traveling through the territory of the Omaha Indians was a risky business at best. It being so cold should keep them in their lodges, but they still had to hunt from time to time. He didn't know what kind of Indians had been on the riverbank, but if they were out and about, so would others be.

Winter lasted long that year, luckily, with no sign of Indians. Storms came and storms went with Cormac sharing caves or self-made shelters with Lop Ear and Horse, and moving slowly westward in between, not really bothered by the storms and sometimes playing in them. They spent one day camping on a plateau on the wind-protected side of a pretty valley just to watch it snow. He and the horses were accustomed to cold, sometimes going weeks without seeing another living person.

On one occasion, supplies dwindling and snow-locked in a large cave, the three of them went without food for three days, other than a soup made with the last of Cormac's flour and sugar water to put something in their stomachs. When they had food, they all ate, when they didn't, they all went hungry. They shared. He found the horses loved the sugary mixture and would do anything to get it. Cormac suspected that them being hungry helped. Under those conditions, teaching them to come at a call or motion of a hand-sign happened easily enough.

Next he taught them to kneel and lie down. By the time the storm let up, both horses would kneel at the “Kneel” command, or lie down on “Down.” While they were in that position, he took to crawling on them, over them, or beside them, using them for a pillow, or just lying on the cave floor in front of them while looking into their eyes and petting their heads. The last night in the cave, he slept between them for warmth. Sometimes he just talked to them about anything and everything, or nothing, and they heard more than they ever wanted to hear about women in general, redheaded women in particular.

Later, he would change the kneel and down commands to “kneel, please,” and “lie down, please,” or for more fun, an offhand “oh, go lie down someplace,” which was much appreciated by whoever was watching when the command was actually carried out.

They found their first green grass of spring peeking through melting snow around the base of a travel sign: an upward-pointing arrow-shaped sign indicating that Crow Creek Crossing was fifteen miles ahead. The words CROW CREEK CROSSING were lined-out and CAMP CHEYENNE was written in smaller letters. The word CAMP had later been also struck out, leaving simply CHEYENNE. Cormac allowed as how folks in them parts had trouble making up their minds. Cormac and company camped that night beside the sign, and after traveling a short distance the next morning, come across a train track going the same direction.

“Ain't that great, guys? Looks like we coulda been riding all this time, and didn't even know it.” However, Cormac didn't begrudge the time. Had they taken the train, he would have missed spending the time and training with Horse and Lop Ear. Their friendship had grown; it had been a fun few months.

They followed the train track until it crossed a bridge made with railroad ties over an arroyo; the ties made it too difficult for the horses to walk across and necessary for them to ride a quarter mile to find a crossing. As they neared Cheyenne, they also neared the track again in time to see a Union Pacific train passing about fifty yards away.

Not forgetting the last train they had seen, the horses started getting a case of restless. As the train neared, the engineer spotted them and blew the whistle. Cormac could see him laughing when the frightened horses began rearing and crow-hopping, wanting to run away. The engineer kept laughing and blowing his whistle. Cormac, tired of these engineers and their shenanigans, slid down from Lop Ear for solid footing and bounced three bullets off various places around the cab of the train. The laughing and the whistling stopped. The engineer no longer thought it funny and was yelling something as they pulled away. Cormac made a big show of pretend laughter. Idiot!