Black Hills (9781101559116) (41 page)

When they had woken up and found him gone, Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz had sadly followed his wishes and registered the farm into Lainey's and their names. Two years later, they had been attacked by a pack of rabid coyotes while working in the fields. They ran as fast as they could but both the Schwartzes were bitten before climbing the only tree in the valley. The tree under which four crosses still stood. The disease had taken the life of Mrs. Schwartz within three weeks, and that of her husband three days later. And so Lainey had lost her second set of parents.

“This is how Cormie must have felt,” she had thought, “all alone with his insides sick and empty.”

Knowing nothing else to do, she had taken on what most would have considered a hopeless project for a lone, twenty-one-year-old woman: working the farm. She accepted that she could not do all that the three of them had been doing and mentally partitioned the farm into two fields: corn and flax.

Rising daily before dawn to milk the cows by lantern light, feeding the chickens, fetching the eggs, and slopping and feeding the hogs before breakfast, she worked in the fields until dark, and then took care of the evening chores, including the second milking of cows anxious with overfilled udders, once again by lantern light. It was hard, and she was tired all the time, but she managed, all the while with a gun tucked in a special pocket she had sewn into her dresses. She had remembered Cormac's story of losing his family because his mother refused to carry a gun.

Only once did Lainey think using her pistol was going to become necessary: when a drunken cowboy passing by was proving himself too amorous and insistent. When he was ignoring her requests to leave, Lainey began acting increasingly fidgety, frequently checking the road from town until the cowboy finally noticed and irritatingly asked her why.

“Well,” she answered, acting timidly with her head down at first, and then glancing again at the road. “My brothers were due back from town an hour ago, and I don't want them to get in trouble again. The last time they came home and found me with a man, they beat him so badly they had to take him to town in the wagon for the doctor to fix up, and the sheriff put them in jail for three days.”

Bemoaning his luck, the cowboy took a quick look in the direction of town, got back on his horse, and was probably in Texas by nightfall. Then, the skies opened and rain began to fall.

Large slow drops at first, then faster and heavier with even larger drops, continuing day and night for three days, then slowing to a drizzle for another two with a short spell of large hard driving hail in the center. Between them, the rain and hail flattened most of the crops and washed out the others. The creek, running fast and muddy, had for a time turned into a rampaging river and overflowed its banks with fast moving rapids that flooded many acres of the land, painting a fresh coat of rich alluvial soil over much of the countryside.

It was God's way, it seemed, of saying that no matter what piddley humans did, or how they partitioned off the world with their silly little barbed-wire fences, he was still in charge and would take charge whenever he felt the need. When the deluge had ended, Lainey had ridden out to survey the damage and found it to be total. The year's crops and all of her hard work were gone.

Stopping to eat her lunch beside a still-rampaging Red Stone Creek, a tributary of the Cheyenne River, she had climbed atop a large uprooted log that had been driven up onto the bank by the extreme force of the water. Taking advantage of having no work to do, she had eaten slowly, enjoying the warmth of the sun following the days of rain and cloud-covered skies. She remembered idly watching an oddly shaped dark stone a little larger than her fist being tumbled, little by little, into a cluster of rocks by a narrow, yet strong, eddy. Other river rocks were being easily and mercilessly tumbled and tossed about; this one was resisting, being rolled only inch-by-inch. “Stubborn little guy,” she remembered thinking. It had reminded her fondly of Cormac. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she retrieved it, surprised by its weight.

Returning to her lunch, she had set the rock on the tree to free her hands, which she needed to push herself back atop the trunk. In doing so, the rock had been jostled and rolled off and fallen, striking a broken and jagged branch on the way down, scratching the black surface and exposing it to be a solid gold nugget.

What Lainey knew about gold was absolutely nothing; she doubted her find. Holding the nugget in her hand and looking at what she knew it to be, she doubted it. This kind of thing happened to other folks, not to Lainey Nayle. She wished Cormie were there to share it with. If there was one, were there more? She worked her way about five miles upstream, finding no others. The first mile downstream, however, was much more productive, Lainey found three more, all of equal size, and then no more. She had walked another five miles fruitlessly before giving it up. She theorized that a large piece of gold, if such it was instead of the fool's gold she had heard of, had torn off from a main deposit only to break into smaller pieces and tumble downstream.

Travelers heading into the hills searching for gold had said that it was very heavy, soft, and easily scratched, and any nuggets found in a stream would most likely be rounded and bull nosed from the rolling. These fit the description to a tee, but still she doubted.

Escorted by Sheriff Woodrow's son, she had found the assay offices in Omaha and Cheyenne both to be temporarily closed, making it necessary to sell the nuggets in Denver. Uneventfully, the train had gotten them there safer and more quickly than riding a horse all that way, and her “little rocks” totaled fifteen point seven two pounds at one hundred and fifty dollars an ounce, totaling thirty-eight thousand dollars. She had very nearly fainted.

Catastrophes notwithstanding, she had enjoyed her life and experiences, but had no desire to be a farmer for the rest of it, although she might have felt differently had Cormie still been there. She remembered wishing he had been there to share in her good fortune. While in Denver, she had overheard two ranchers discussing plans to go in together and buy the Circle T ranch because it was such a beautiful and well-placed spread and neither could afford to buy it alone.

Within the hour, she had rented a horse, gotten directions, and was on her way to see the ranch. The Circle T lived up to its billing. It was a pretty ranch on a plateau in a large valley of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains north and east of Boulder, with plenty of water, and it had been well maintained, but, the seller warned, the hands were rustling the cattle and had killed his father.

The next morning found her waiting in front of the bank for it to open. Before dinnertime, having arranged to meet the seller there, she had negotiated herself a twenty-five thousand acre ranch for a dollar an acre, registered it and changed the name to the L-Bar N, and by suppertime had put the run on the crooked hands.

The next day, she had hired a foreman to teach her ranching, and had him hire a new crew. Now here she was, standing on the porch of the best ranch in Eastern Colorado—her porch—again wishing Cormie was there to share the good fortune.

After he had left, she had had occasional suitors, but none of any interest. She had gone riding with one a few times and on a picnic with a couple of others. All had been pleasant times, but men other than Cormie had just never provided any romantic interest, and somehow she knew that wherever he was, even though she had hurt him badly, the bond they shared was strong and would not break. The fingers holding her coffee mug were white from the pressure she was applying and some blood had dripped onto the porch from the other hand that had curled hard into a fist, digging her fingernails, unfelt, into her palm. It had to be that way. It just had to.

Interrupting Lainey Nayle's thoughts, her foreman walked out of the bunkhouse and across the yard to her. She wondered about their first meeting; what infinitesimally small event had transpired, starting the chain of events prompting him to enter the general store at the exact moment she had been leaving it, causing them to bump into each other when they had first met? She had liked him immediately.

He had never told her that he had been coming to look for her and had refused to work for Lambert after learning he was making plans to take over her ranch. He had wanted no part of the plan and had decided to help her if she would hire him.

The storekeeper had already told her that the best foreman around for her would be Shank Williams, if she could get him. That he was a tough, honest man with a fast gun, which he used judiciously. According to the storekeeper, Shank was a man of his word, no matter what.

“Good morning, Shank.” Lainey smiled warmly.

Her green eyes sparkled, and her smile lit up her face. Shank looked up at her with the rising sun behind her, outlining her shape and glowingly reflecting through her red hair.
Lord, you outdid yourself on this one,
he thought.

“Good morning, Miss Nayle.” He smiled back. “It looks like we got us the beginnings of a beautiful day.”

She looked around silently one more time at the blue sky over the surrounding hills and at the distant snow-capped mountains.

“That we do, that we do,” Lainey answered in her best Irish accent. Then, speaking in her normal, soft Irish lilt, “Let me get you some coffee, and you can tell me what happened in the pass last night. I heard gunfire.”

After they had gotten settled on the porch chairs, he tasted his coffee and found it hot, black, and strong. She knew how to make coffee that a man could enjoy, and that surprised Shank not in the least. He seriously doubted there was anything Lainey Nayle didn't do well.

“After we finished moving the herd up closer to the buildings where we can better keep an eye on them, I sent Lem to try to get through the pass. I remembered an old trail that, to my knowledge, hasn't been used in years. I was hopin' Lambert didn't know about it and even if he did, would think it too far out of the way and wouldn't have it covered. Lem is more Injun than some Injuns; I was hopin' he could Injun through and go to Denver for help.

“It almost worked. He was nearly through when he stepped on a loose rock and fell. He said there were at least two, and maybe three, men hiding in the rocks that opened fire, but it was cloudy and too dark to see; they didn't hit anything. Lem was smart enough not to shoot back and let them see where he was. Instead, he just slipped out and came home.”

Lainey nodded her approval. “How are we doing on ammunition? Most of the things in my vegetable garden are ripe; I think we have enough food for two or three weeks, and after that we can kill some beef, but I'm worried about the ammunition.”

Shank had also been worrying some about that himself, but before he could answer Lainey jumped up.

“What is that, Shank?” She was pointing toward the twin peaks they had just been discussing.

Shank looked where she was pointing.

“What, Miss Nayle? I don't see anything.”

“There is something moving out there, at the top of the alluvial fan, directly below Kater point.”

Shank was still at a loss, and then he began to see small movement. “It looks like a single rider, ma'am, coming fast.”

Stepping to the door, Lainey picked up the Winchester that had been leaning just inside and jacked a cartridge into the chamber as she turned to meet the possible threat. Shank smiled slightly. Standing tall and straight in the center of the porch, her attention focused on the fast approaching rider, she held the rifle with a familiar ease in the ready position, her body turned slightly for a quick and smooth rise of the rifle to her cheek, her face a study of strength and confidence: a western woman . . . and what a woman, he thought, strong and ready to take on whatever came at her, neither asking for, nor giving any quarter.

She was not a beautiful woman who happened to be strong. She was a strong, competent woman who just happened to be beautiful and, unlike most attractive women that Shank had known, she made little of it. She neither used it to her advantage nor acted coquettishly, nor pretended to be unaware of the fact. That she was prepared to take a part in their defense was comforting and no surprise. She wasn't just a boss that sent the hands into danger while keeping herself safely cooped up. He had heard the story of how she, with no help from others, had kicked the renegades off the ranch when she first took it over, but wasn't sure what to think of the story. He had since become a believer.

Shank recognized the odd shape of the rider's hat.

“It's okay, Miss Nayle. That's Candy.”

Nearly fifty years old, Candy wore the dubious distinction of being the oldest rider on the ranch. All rawhide and wang leather, he was stringy tough. Other than Shank, he was always the first up in the morning and the last to give it up at night; he did more work than most. He had never met anyone who knew more about cattle than he did, but he kept that piece of information under his hat. He had heard that wisdom comes with age; one of the wisest things he had come to know was that no one wanted to hear about how smart he was.

Candy Johnson slid his horse to a stop in front of Lainey and Shank and took no time for greetings.

“I think Lambert is getting ready to blow up the pass! I've heard of a new explosive that comes in sticks for easy usin', and I saw three of his men riding up the trail with some boxes marked DYNAMITE tied to a packhorse.”

“That son of—” Shank cut himself off. “Sorry, ma'am, if they blow the pass, it'll stop up the Sweet for sure. The lion's share of our water comes out of that ole river.

“They have a big lead on us; I doubt we can get there in time, but we can try. And we can sure as hell thin their ranks a little if we can catch them coming down.” He bounded off the porch. “Get yourself another horse, Candy. I'll roust the men.”