Black Hills (9781101559116) (48 page)

Lainey's hand stopped with her coffee halfway to her mouth and the murmuring ceased at the mention of the name. The silence in the room was a thickness hanging heavy in the air. He had their attention.

After a second to get her breath, Lainey asked, “What about Mackle, and why do I need to know about him?”

“I was surprised to see him riding for you, ma'am, but as long as he is, I won't ride against him.”

“What do you mean, riding for me? I have heard of Mackle, but I have never met the man, and he certainly does not work for me.”

“Well, he was this afternoon, ma'am, when he stopped us from blowing up the pass.”

Shank exploded, “That was Mackle? The big guy on a big gray horse?”

“Well, he was on a grulla when he came at us out of nowhere, but there was a big gray trying hard to keep up. Both horses were covered in sweat. Since the gray was wearing the saddle, and Mackle was riding the grulla bareback, I'm guessing that he rode them two horses near to death to catch us and had probably swapped horses just before he attacked.”

The chill spread through Shank again as he realized how close he really had come to meeting his maker earlier in the day: the Mackle gun had been zeroed in right on his chest. But why had Mackle stopped short of shooting him? Was it Miss Nayle's name, as he suspected?

“How do you know it was Mackle?” Shank asked.

“I first met him some time ago.... Three other fellows, along with myself, were over in Dakota Territory branding some cattle that didn't quite belong to us, when he rode out of an arroyo and accidentally into the middle of our camp. He was willing to just ride on—said he wasn't interested in other people's problems anymore. Then the men I was with said they were going to kill him. I tried to talk them out of it, but they weren't listening to me; so he just ups with this big ole scattergun and changed their minds.

“Then, he swapped the scattergun for a strange-looking old rifle that looked about a mile long and scared up a jackrabbit with it. After it was running, he dropped it with one shot, just to show us he could. Then, he made us herd them cattle back to their owners and told us that he would bring up the rear and if any of us tried to run off, he said he would shoot us out of the saddle.

“Well, I tricked him and got out of range and rode off into some trees, but just as I was entering the trees, I looked back and there he was, looking at me over the sights of that ole rifle. I knew I hadn't fooled anyone but myself. If he would've pulled the trigger, that big ole rifle would have just reached right out and knocked me right out of the saddle just like he said.

“Later, when I began hearing stories about Mackle and his description, I realized that that was who he had been, and that I had not only seen the Mackle gun; I had been under it, and lived. I doubt there are many people who can say that. To realize it was a strange feeling.”

Shank knew exactly what he was talking about. “So why are you here?”

“Lambert heard that a spread east of here had gotten hold of some dynamite to clear some land. He had some of the boys go steal a bunch of it. He had tried to blow up the pass once before but somehow you found out about it and stopped him. This time there was six of us with two cases of dynamite strapped to a packhorse, and we were just about to enter the pass, when he rode right into the middle of us with both guns blazing: one man against six. We saw him coming in time to start firing, but he was riding too fast to be much of a target. His horse ran straight into Jackson, knocking him and his horse upside down. Then he was in the middle of us: spinning and shooting and getting shot . . . a bunch of times.

“He got all the others before turning to me. I had recognized him and wasn't shooting. When he turned to me, I was sitting still, holding my rifle sighted on him just as he had on me. I hoped he would know I wasn't going to shoot at him. I guess he did because his gun started up at me, and then stopped. There had been six of us, like I said, and he got all but me, and could have gotten me, but instead he just holstered his guns and grabbed up the reins of the packhorse carrying the dynamite and brought it to me.

“For some reason, he trusted me. He held out the reins and asked me if I would please take it to Lainey Nayle at the L-Bar, said he didn't believe he could make it. I said I would. He said ‘Thanks pardner,' and rode off with that big ole lop-eared gray horse following, but he sure took some heavy hits. There was blood all over him. There were bloody holes in his pants and his shirt, and there was blood running down the side of his face, and I could see more running down a doodad he was wearing around his neck, and a steady stream dripping off his boot.”

“What kind of doodad?” Shank wanted to know, curiously.

The ex–Lambert rider thought about it a moment, then answered, “The blood made it hard to make out, but I think it was an arrowhead on a cord of some kind.”

There it was!
“Oh my God!” Lainey exclaimed, jumping to her feet and knocking over the table and everything on it: the coffee, the dishes, the checkerboard, the bean can of cigarette butts, a knife and whetstone, and the people unlucky enough to have been sitting on the other side of the table from her.

In that stark instant, it all came together. What, in the back of her mind, she had been thinking and praying for but dared not let herself think about or even believe possible.
Cormie was here!
Somehow he had learned she was in trouble and had come....
He was here!
. . . Heaven help those who got in his way . . . they were on a shortcut to hell.

It was the arrowhead that did it . . . she remembered giving it to him. In that stark instant, all of the images of what she was being told fell into place.

The big ole scattergun . . . Cormie had used a shotgun on the men who killed his family.

The rabbit-shot with a funny old rifle . . . Cormie had taught her to shoot on a funny old rifle he called GERT.

Shank had said the stranger was rattlesnake fast.... Cormie had saved her life by shooting the head off a striking rattler.

And now, this man says Mackle rode off on a grulla horse with a lop-eared gray following him. . . . Cormie had left home on Lop Ear and had taken the outlaw's grulla horse with him.

Mackle—Mac L—Mack Lynch—Cormac Lynch: Mackle and Cormie were one and the same.
And he was here, Cormie was here!
Cormie was the one who had been fighting for her, and now he was somewhere out there in the darkness—badly wounded and probably dying.

“I want every man jack of you in the saddle within five minutes and out searching for him until he's found!” she screamed. “And don't come back until he is!” She spoke with fury in her voice while running for the door. When she reached it, she spun and looked back.

Shank Williams was momentarily frozen speechless from the instantaneous mutation her face had undergone in those brief seconds. Flushed, brittle, and full of hatred, her ears were bright red with fire in her eyes and her face was filled with an intense Irish fury he would have never believed possible. She repeated her mandate vehemently, the soft Irish lilt transformed into the angry, guttural Irish brogue of her father rolling strong and powerful from her tongue:
“And don't any of you be showin' your faces around here again without him!”

Lainey grabbed the gun belt and rifle hanging by the door, and still in her robe and night clothes, bolted out the door, galloping wildly into the night on the Lambert rider's horse, in total disregard of Shank William's frantic calls to stop.

C
ormac Lynch was floating down a river on a log with broken and jagged branches gouging him in several places; the pain was horrendous, his body on fire, and someone was throwing water on him. The log was about to go over a waterfall, and there were voices drifting up from below.

Presently, he realized it was just a dream. He was nauseous and wet with sweat, he had a fever, and his head was being pounded by a double-jack sledgehammer with every heartbeat. He was getting wetter and hearing voices. He tried to ignore both unsuccessfully.

“Let me go back to sleep,” he begged softly. “Please, I'm all wrung out.”

Rain was falling on him and his mountain. Later, it would get heavier. Right now there was urgency to the voices—something needed doing.

“Go away,” Cormac mumbled. “I'm done in.”

But the voices continued, the volume rising and falling, punctuated by an occasional sound of wood cracking. Reluctantly, his groggy mind was drug out of the peaceful darkness. The voices were real, but he had no idea where they were coming from, where he was, or why was he lying in the rain.

His head was throbbing fiercely with every heartbeat, there was a violent pain in his shoulder and back, and his legs hurt like hell. He started to turn to relieve the pain in his back, and then became aware of where he was. He was lying on a rock with most parts of his body screaming in agony. He stopped the yell that had begun in his throat before it escaped his mouth. He still didn't know where the voices were coming from, but he didn't think it wise to make noise until he had found out.

A little at a time, he moved his body to find out what parts of him were still working and was happy that everything was functioning, horribly painfully, but functioning. The cold rain was reviving him, and feeling awful-mighty good on his fever. The voices coming from somewhere below were becoming clearer. Laboriously suppressing the moans, Cormac drug himself to the edge of his shelf. It was dark, and someone had built a fire on the flat some ten feet below, protected enough from the rain by a heavy growth of tree overhangs that caught most of the diagonally falling rain.

“You're going to sign this paper eventually; you might as well do it now and save yourself the pain.”

Another crack punctuated the words. The crack turned out to be a slap, and the voice turned out to belong to a monkey-faced man with arms to match. Cormac Lynch had found Lambert, and the victim turned out to be a woman who had fallen to the edge of the firelight.

“Come on, get up. I didn't hit you that hard.” The monkey took a drink from a whiskey bottle, and then continued. “I want to thank you for riding out to us like you did. It was damn foolish of you to be out alone, but it certainly saved me a lot of trouble, especially the way you're dressed and all, but who the hell did you think you was anyway, riding into this camp full of men like a crazed woman?

“Yeah, I know you rode one of us down and got three more before your gun went empty, but you caught us by surprise, lady. We never thought about a woman being able to shoot like that. And Cotton'll probably die by morning, that'll make it five. But we got you now, and you're not going anywhere. I intended to have you and your ranch, and I still will. But if you cooperate, I'll let you live as my wife, and we'll fix up the ranch even better than it is now. If not, after you sign the deed over to me, I'll have you right here, then turn you over to the men.” He took another drink from the bottle.

“There ain't gonna be much left of you when they're done. They're pretty mad that you managed to kill some of their friends, so when they're done with you, we'll just plant you right here under a couple tons of rocks and tell everyone you went away. Nobody will believe us, but there won't be anything they can to do about it. And without you, we'll be able to handle your men.”

The woman began to move, and Cormac knew without seeing the red hair that it was Lainey. He had found Lambert; now all that was necessary was to put a bullet through him, and Cormac could rest in peace.

Lambert pulled Lainey to her feet. There was blood coming from her nose, and even in the poor firelight Cormac could see bruises. She was only wearing some kind of nightgown, and it was torn at the top. Lainey Nayle was standing straight and proud, staring Lambert in the eyes and refusing to respond, and it was making Lambert furious.

“You wouldn't talk to me in town, and you think you're too damned good to talk to me now, but you will. And I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. By the time I get done with you, you'll do and say a lot of things you never thought you would.”

The fury and rage of losing his family and what had happened to his mother and Becky that he had thought forgotten roared through him!

He yanked out the Colt. He was goin' to put a lot of great big holes in that son of a bitch, and the .44 Colt was just the thing to do it.

Then Cormac Lynch waged his greatest battle ever—to keep control of his mind. It was in him to blast Lambert the hell off the face of the earth, but that wouldn't get Lainey anything but dead. There were others that had to be accounted for. Cormac willed himself to act rationally. Quietly, he reloaded his guns. In his haste, he fumbled and dropped some of the cartridges, removed more from the packages, and tried again.

Having counted seven men around the fire, Cormac was wishin' mighty hard he had his third gun, but wishin' wasn't going to make it happen. He had left one with the lion. Holding the guns under his arm to muffle the sound, one at a time he cocked them both and worked himself into a sitting position on the edge of his rock shelf.

Lambert was still hitting Lainey from time to time, detailing exactly what he was going to do to her.

Cormac was going to see about that in short order. Cormac upped his guns to begin firing when another voice came from an area away from the fire, which had previously gone unnoticed by him. It was the first that he had realized there was such an area out of his vision and that there was at least one somebody there, maybe more.