Black Hills (9781101559116) (36 page)

No, there was no use in him thinking settling-down thoughts about Lainey, or any woman—especially Lainey. Although, he had heard it said that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, he never really understood it. All of a sudden, it made sense.

Cormac listened to his men's plans to spend their windfall and laughed along with them and cleaned his guns. He would wear a third gun tucked in his waist until they got to Kansas. He hoped they would not be needed, but he believed what his pa had tried to get his mother to accept and which she so tragically found out too late: one must be prepared. Sometimes when a gun is needed, it is needed right then, and five seconds later is just too darned late.

He remained motionless as his mind went back to that terrible day. The mental pictures formed in his mind and tears welled up in his eyes, and the inside of his nose took on a strange crinkling sensation until he realized the voices around him were silent and the men were watching him. He still couldn't think about it and, as always, pushed it down and shook it off.

“Just daydreamin' what I'm goin' to do with my share,” he told them.

They all laughed at his guns and belts, with one being brown and one being black and one pistol longer than the other, but when Cormac stood up and strapped them both on, the laughter stopped. He had told the men about the rustlers; the guns brought it home. They knew the damage he could do with those guns, and if he was taking the threat seriously, they would do well to follow his lead. It finally sunk in . . . some of them might not get to Kansas.

They would be following the same Goodnight-Loving Trail upon which Oliver Loving had been killed by Comanches in'67. It ran across the arid and lonely untamed vastness of sun-blasted Texas, up through Colorado and into Wyoming. They would follow it across an unpeopled portion of Texas before cutting off for Dodge City on a route that had been described to Cormac by a puncher using lines drawn in the dirt beside a campfire. It might skirt the area the rustlers seemed to favor.

The first day they made but ten miles. Three thousand head of cattle stretched out to nearly a mile. Looking down at them from a hilltop, they looked for all like a giant snake weaving its way through the irregular countryside.

Oley was working point and Mickey running drag with their remuda. The bosses had made sure there were plenty of spare horses—they were going to be needed. Red alone would go through five or six a day; he was everywhere, checking on point and drag, directing the others and running back cattle that tried to head out on their own. Cormac intended on doing all the scouting; if there was skullduggery afoot, he was going to find it.

Buntline's book was silly, but it did have a few entertaining moments and only cost a dime, which, in Cormac's opinion, was eleven cents more than it was worth, but it had added a few words to his vocabulary, skullduggery being one of them. The word was probably made up by some inventive writer somewhere that didn't get out much. But, was there any skullduggin' to be done, he would be the one doing it.

They suffered the heat and longed for the coolness of the evenings. To give Lop Ear and Horse some rest, Cormac would use another mount here and there, but he wanted his own horses for scouting. If it became necessary to get someplace—or away from someplace—in a hurry, Cormac wanted a horse between his legs with plenty of speed and bottom. In simple terms, when the chips were down and hell was exploding, he wanted to be sittin' right smack in the middle of either Lop Ear or Horse.

By the end of the week, they had settled into a routine and were making twelve to fourteen miles per day, and by the end of the fifth week were on the verge of passing out of Texas, when it began to rain. Most days were real scorchers; the rain was more than welcome. They had been a day and a half without water, and Cormac thought his mouth was so dry he coulda spit cotton. A few days break from the heat would be enjoyed.

Whenever possible, he stopped the herd at night in flat areas with surrounding hills to help hold it, and to make watching easier from one of the hilltops on nights with enough moonlight. On one such night with a full and bright moon overhead and too many things on his mind to sleep, he elected to take advantage of the good weather to carefully clean his saddle and holsters with his pa's leather balm and finished by cleaning his guns. Although he had just cleaned them a couple days earlier, too often was better than too seldom. He began scouting early the next morning, and just before dawn found a few cigarette butts and the tracks of two riders.

They were being scouted . . . from then on no more cow-ponies, he would only ride Lop Ear or Horse.

After lunch, the rains started. Looking up above the sky, Cormac commented, “Very funny. Ha-ha! You wait until I get my saddle nice and clean and then you rain on it.”

But as long as he was doing it, God was making no halfway job of it. It started right off with large drops, and quickly turned into a downpour, severely lashing the countryside. There would be no skullduggin' goin' on in this storm.

Cookie put up a tarp over his kitchen and kept two pots of coffee going constantly. “Looks like we got us a real gulley washer, Mack,” he said.

The occasional lightning flashes out of the rain-whipped darkness were making the herd restless; everyone was in the saddle. The punchers talked to the herd and sang to them and hollered friendly insults at each other about how bad their voices were and kept making friendly sounds in general to keep the herd distracted from the weather.

Hearing the cowboy's voices was soothing to the herd; they knew they weren't alone. It was a long day and a longer night with each of the men in turn riding in for coffee or some of Cookie's sowbelly, beans, and cornbread or sourdough bread.

Cookie had proven to be every bit as good a cook on the trail as he was on the ranch and was also downright insightful. He had brought along some extra sugar and about midnight, produced a large tray of candy, a white creamy-soft concoction so sweet it made Cormac's teeth hurt.

“Cookie, you'll do. This is gonna cheer the boys up considerable. You're one in a million to think of it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cookie said, and waved off the compliment, but Cormac knew he appreciated hearing it. Along with a cup of hot coffee that tasted so strong Cormac wondered if the cup would dissolve, that candy went down right easy, and it made him think of home for a moment. Bits and pieces came back to him clearly:

He was ten years old. “Cormac wash your feet before going to bed, you've been running barefoot all day.” . . . “You've torn the knees out of that pair of pants so many times, there's nothing left to patch.” . . . “Cormie, fill the lamps please, before it gets dark, and take this catalog out to the toilet with you the next time you go.” . . . “Cormie, please slop the hogs after dinner.” . . . “Cormie, quit teasing your sister, or I'll have your father tan your hide.” His pa never did that but once, and that was when he caught Cormac trying to shave with his straight razor when he was five years old. Cormac had gotten tanned good for that one.

Cormac confiscated a couple of extra pieces of candy for Lop Ear and Horse.

“What home?” he mused to himself as he made them each kneel for it. “You don't have one anymore.”

The North Star was high when the rain passed and the clouds cleared. Cormac rode out on Lop Ear with Horse trotting alongside. He instructed Red to let the boys, other than those on guard, sleep a couple hours before getting on the trail. The dawn was taking its own sweet time about comin', and they would be tired today, but so would the herd; there wouldn't be many brushers and runners on this day. Mostly it would be a day of plodding forward, likely only making eight or ten miles, but that would be eight or ten miles farther than they had been.

C
ormac and company had covered about five miles when they topped a hill about an hour before dawn and caught sight of a fire in the distance. It appeared to be near the top of a hill about two or three valleys ahead. Cormac reckoned he had found his rustlers, most likely on their way to collect his herd.

“We'll have to see about that, guys,” he said. Lop Ear's ears perked up.

“That's all right,” Cormac told him. “You go on back to sleep. I'll wake you up when we get there.” Lop Ear snorted. Cormac figured that was horse talk for “very funny.”

Dropping down off a hill very nearly brought him to grief and smack-dab into the middle of a bunch of Indians. He pulled up behind a large mesquite bush right quick. Below, there were several trees, each serving as a tie pole for hastily thrown up lean-to's of canvas, hides, and blankets. There was just enough light to make out their ponies in a makeshift corral with a lot of sleeping bodies strewn about. A wild guess told Cormac there was in the neighborhood of thirty to forty horses with a rider for each: not a neighborhood he cared to visit. The absence of teepees meant no women or children; this was no group out sightseeing. This was a war party out raiding and no place that Mrs. Lynch's little tater picker, Cormie, needed to be.

“Quiet, guys,” he whispered, and reined Lop Ear back around the hill.

There had been talk by the Rangers of Lakata Loma, a young buck leading a small group of other malcontents that had broken from their tribe of Lakota Sioux up in the Dakota Territory and who were marauding south, raiding, raping, and killing all they could find.

That many warriors would require much food. The Indians were adept at living off the land, hunting and fishing as needed, but that many of them in one group would make survival a struggle in unpopulated areas where they couldn't steal cattle or horses to supplement their hunting efforts. A herd of cattle that could be hidden in some out of the way canyon would be just what the doctor ordered, a home base from which the Indians could branch out.

An idea began to form; where before he had one problem, now there were two. Well, just maybe, with a little luck, they could solve each other, but he would have to get a move on. Cormac heeled Lop Ear to a slow trot. Sound would travel very easily in the early-morning silence, but the thick grass, soft from fresh rain, muffled most of the sound, allowing him to up the speed to a canter, then to a gallop. Lop Ear and Horse were happy at the chance to stretch their legs.

They skirted the valley and came quietly up on the other side, behind a clump of bushes looking down on the Indian camp. The bushes weren't big enough to hide Lop Ear and Horse standing up, so they had to lie down, and Cormac warned them to be silent. GERT slipped easily out of the scabbard, and he checked the load.

It was getting light and there was movement beginning in the camp below. Cormac crawled through the bushes to the Indian side and found a surprisingly dry place to lie. The branches above had grown and twisted together to form something of a roof. He squirmed down into the ground, making indentations for his elbows. Looking down GERT's sight, he judged the distance to be about two hundred yards. GERT could handle that without breaking a sweat.

What with the rain and all, the Indians also must have had a late night and were waking up slowly. GERT could help them with that. If they had any coffee, they weren't goin' to get any on this fine morning. That should start their day off for them and make them about as grouchy as an ole she-bear with a toothache.

Cormac figured to put a bullet or two smack-dab into the middle of them to get their attention and then run like the devil, although Lakata Loma would make a fine target, if he could identify him. With some luck, Cormac just might put a stop to his senseless killin'. His pa's belief of giving the other fellow a fair chance came to mind.

Sorry, Pa,
he thought.
Some folks deserve no more than they give.
Lakata Loma gave no one a fair chance. There was no reason at all, that Cormac could see, for him to be treated any differently. The sound of a grumpy camp waking up from a bad night floated up the hill in the placid air: grumbling voices and sharp retorts in an Indian tongue, the sounds of wooden tree branches being broken for fires came from several locations around the camp along with the “clunks” of clay pots, the horses stirring, and a couple of stallions trying to keep their respective mares under control.

Cormac's long glass was bringing them up close, and his attention was drawn to a brave stepping out from under a low hung tarp of some kind, wearing only a loincloth, moccasins, brightly colored face paint, and a feather in his hair. The Indian looked around as he stretched; it was Kahatama! Cormac looked again. It was! It really was Kahatama! Their medicine man really could bring back the dead. Well, damn. That was a lot to believe, but there he was.

Cormac watched as he slipped an arrow quiver over his shoulder. Picking up a longbow and a rifle, the Indian strode forcefully toward a larger fire that had been started in the center of camp; other Indians moved aside to allow him passage. Kahatama glanced up the hill to where Cormac was hiding, and through the glass, Cormac was looking directly into the same eyes that had gotten so big when Cormac's knife surged into the Indian heart . . . Kahatama! . . . What the hell? Cormac just couldn't accept that. He almost dropped his long-glass. He looked again. Did the Indian know he was there? Kahatama appeared to be looking directly at him. If he fired, would the Indian strike him down with a bolt of lightning?