Shadow of Legends
Authors: Stephen A. Bly
There will be six books in this series
FORTUNES OF THE BLACK HILLS
by STEPHEN BLY
Book #1
Beneath a Dakota Cross
Book #2
Shadow of Legends
For a list of other books by
Stephen Bly
write:
Stephen Bly
Winchester, Idaho 83555
© 2000
by Stephen A. Bly
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
0â8054â2174â2
Published by Broadman & Holman Publishers,
Nashville, Tennessee
Editorial Team: Leonard G. Goss and John Landers
Page Design and Typesetting: TF Designs,
Mount Juliet, Tennessee
Dewey Decimal Classification: 813
Subject Heading: WESTERN FICTION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bly, Stephen A., 1944â
Shadow of legends / Stephen A. Bly.
    p. cm. -- (Fortunes of the Black Hills ; bk. 2)
ISBN 0â8054â2174â2 (alk. paper)
I. Title. II. Series: Bly, Stephen A., 1944- Fortunes of the
Black Hills ; bk. 2.
PS3552.L93S52 2000
813'.54âdc21
99-16673
CIP
1 2 3 4 5 04 03 02 01 00
For
Russ
our firstborn
AUTHOR'S NOTES
Deadwood, D. T. (Dakota Territory), carries an image of a wild and reckless gold mining camp, even a hundred years past its prime. In that regard, it does not stand alone. Bodie, California . . . Tombstone, Arizona . . . Creede, Colorado . . . and Goldfield, Nevada . . . to name a few, likewise conjure up impressions of bad men, wicked women, and violent daily life.
The portrait of Deadwood lingers still because of the longevity of its golden veins and the length of its childhood. Gold ore is still being pried out of the stubborn earth from the fabled Homestake Mine just up the gulch in Lead, South Dakota. One hundred and twenty-five years of production is an incredible testimony to the wealth of the northern Black Hills.
No other boomtown in the late nineteenth century remained isolated for so long. The railroad first punched, prodded, and Âpleaded its way across the West in 1869. But Deadwood remained a stagecoach and freight wagon town until 1890. That meant for its first fifteen years, only the dauntless would make the journey. And only the courageous, and the lucky, would survive its rigors.
Deadwood was built in the bottom of a gulch so steep there can only be two streets parallel to the creek. Respectable homesites had to be carved into the mountainside to the east called Forest Hill or up the creek at the gradually sloping bend called Ingleside.
From the front porches of Forest Hill children gazed at the rooftops of their neighbors and the activities of Main Street. Below the unmarked but clearly defined “deadline” of Wall Street lay the part of town known as the badlands. It was filled with saloons, dance halls, casinos, and gunshots in the night. Deadwood society was divided by the deadline.
One thing all the people of Deadwood held in common, no matter what part of town they called home, was that they lived life in the shadows. The gulch is deep. The mountains steep. The winter sun stayed out on the Dakota plains until late morning. Finally it Âexploded above White Rocks and cleansed the city of shadows. Rapid City, east of the mountains, could enjoy long, beautiful sunrises . . . not Deadwood.
Some time in the middle of the afternoon, the sun stole behind the ponderosa pines of Forest Hill. Cheyenne, to the southwest, could take time to contemplate the profusion of oranges and yellows of a sunset. In Deadwood, the sun left the scene quicker than a gambler caught with an extra ace up his sleeve.
Life in the shadows. It happens to all of us. We stand so close to a dominant personality that our reflection can hardly be noticed. Someone more famous. More skilled. More powerful. Sometimes they are people we hardly know. Sometimes they are members of our own family.
But does God call us all to the bright light of day, or does He destine some of us to live in the shadows? The answer is not always easy.
Perhaps that's why Todd Fortune's struggle is not too much different from many of ours.
Stephen Bly
Broken Arrow Crossing, Idaho
Winter of '99
CONTENTS
Be merciful unto me, O God,
be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee:
yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge,
until these calamities be overpast.
Psalm 57:1
CHAPTER ONE
Deadwood, Dakota Territory, June 1880
The man who stood across the counter from Todd Fortune brandished his dirt-baked and leathery brown face like a badge of honor. He flapped his greasy, tobacco-stained, drooping, thick dark beard like a flag that should garner respect.
Todd squinted his eyes slightly to keep the man's astringent odor from causing him to gag.
It must take years of disciplined effort to stay that repulsive.
When the man opened his mouth, his two front teeth stuck slanted out a good half inch lower from the rest, which gave him a rabbit-like lookâa big, hairy, dirty, skunk-smelling rabbit.
“I came to the Gulch with your daddy in '76 and I reckon that gives me a little credit, Boy,” he boomed as if shouting across a canyon.
Todd rubbed his neatly trimmed, light-brown goatee and glanced around at the hardware store, which teemed with boomtown customers. His voice was soft, yet firm. “You say you're a friend of my father's?”
“Yep, me and him was what you might call partners!” He rapped thick, stubby fingers on the counter. The pine pitch and grime camouflaged any trace of fingernails.
A lady with a black silk scarf tied around the neck of her white blouse promenaded into the store. Todd glanced more than once. A flat, mountain leghorn, black straw hat turned up in the front perched smartly atop her carefully pinned long brown hair. A wreath of tiny artificial French white daisies served as a hat band. She caught the attention of every male customer and clerk, except the foul-smelling man. “Eh, what did you say your name was?” Todd asked.
“Tidy Dumont.”
Todd still scrutinized the woman. “Tiny?” he mumbled.
“Tidy. The name is Tidy Dumont. Your pap told you about me, didn't he?”
The woman stopped by a barrel of used steel drilling points. Her narrow chin coyly tilted, she glanced at Todd Fortune and batted her eyelashes.
I do believe that woman is flirting with me.
Todd quickly studied the crowded store to see if any others had noticed. He forced himself to concentrate on the man.
Meanwhile, the lady strolled up to the counter. She carried a three-pound steel drilling point about the diameter and length of a fat stick of dynamite. The black patent leather tip of her gray French kid boots glistened like polished obsidian as the heels danced on the hard wooden floor. “I'm sorry, Mr. Dumont, I really have never heard of you. We have to operate on cash for new folks in town.”
The lady held a black-gloved hand to her nose as she caught a whiff of the big man and quickly scooted to the opposite end of the counter, still clutching the drill point. Her wide set brown eyes rollicked. Her soft, smooth voice had a giggle. “Young man, would you put this on my account?”
Todd forgot the ill-smelling man across from him. “A drilling point, Ma'am? Are you going to do some blasting?”
She chewed her tongue and rocked back on her heels, trying to suppress an outburst. “Yes, I am. But that is not what I want this for.”
“Listen . . . ,” Tidy Dumont interrupted. “Are you going to dispense me some credit or not?”
“Just a moment . . .” Fortune said. “Let me take care of the lady.” He stepped toward the woman and noticed the bright reflection of her single-stud diamond earrings. “Now, ma'am, just exactly what are you going to do with that drilling point?”
Tidy Dumont moved down the counter like an avalanche of filth. “All I need is ten dollars credit. I need the cash.”
Todd Fortune turned back to the man. “You need cash? I thought you wanted credit to purchase something in the store.”
“A man cain't eat hardware.”
“Nor can you drink it. Just a minute,” he turned back to the woman. “You were saying?”
She banged the heavy drilling point on the counter in such a way that all conversation in the store ceased. “I intend to drop this in my husband's soup if he's late for lunch again.”
Fortune folded his arms across his gray wool vest. “Your husband sounds like a very tardy man.”
“He works too hard and acts as if the business could not survive without him.” She laced together her thin, gloved fingers. “Perhaps I should purchase some blasting powder as well.”
Fortune straightened his tie, then tugged the rumpled cuffs of his white cotton shirt. “My, you are serious.”
“We have some very important things to discuss, and he promised we would do that today,” she divulged.
Tidy Dumont lunged across the counter and grabbed Fortune's shoulder. “Mister, are you ignoring me?”
Fortune seized the man's wrist and shoved him straight back so quickly that the man staggered. Todd could feel his neck flush, his shoulders stiffen. He released the man's arm, opened his mouth, then glanced at the women's scowl. He let out a long sigh. “Dumont, I am talking with my wife. Would you please let me finish?”
The man wiped the back of his hairy hand across his lips. “Your wife?”
She turned to the big man and smiled. “Mr. Fortune has a habit of working through the lunch hour, which leaves me to eat alone. Don't you think that is a sad commentary?”
“Eh . . . yes, Ma'am. I didn't know you was his wife.”
She turned back to Todd. “You will be home around twelve o'clock?”
“What's the bill of fare?” he asked.
“Drill point soup and a serious discussion.” Then she cracked such a deep, easy smile that it made Todd's heart jump. “I'm teasing,” she added.
“About which?” he prodded.
She spun around and strutted toward the door. The bustle of her imported challies skirt seemed to wave good-bye. “About the soup,” she said.
“I'm glad to see you out and about,” he called.
Todd Fortune watched her pause and flutter near the front door. “I only came down here to beguile you, my dear.”
Tidy Dumont clenched his big fist around the steel drilling point and raised it in front of Todd Fortune as if it were a club. “I said, give me ten dollars cash credit in memory of your daddy and me.”
Todd rubbed the back of his neck. “Dumont, the only thing I'll give you on credit is a bar of lye soap, and then you have to promise to use it before you ever come back inside this store.”
The man laid the drilling point on the counter. “I had a run-in with a skunk,” he admitted. “You ever skin a skunk?”
“No.”
“Well, don't try it, no matter how hungry you are. Yep, me and your pappy was mighty hungry when we first got to the gulch in '76.”
“My father arrived in the fall of '75,” Fortune said.
“That's what I meant. He and I rode in from Sundance Mountain.”
“He came up from French Creek in the south.”
“I knowed that . . . I was just testin' you. How do I know for sure you're his boy?”
“Well, you don't. But I know one thing. You didn't ride into the Gulch with my father.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he rode up here with four men. Big River Frank is buried up on Mount Moriah. Grass Edwards is lecturing at a college in California. And the other two are sitting in the back room of the Merchant's Hotel right now playing whist.”
“I cain't believe your daddy never mentioned my name when he was alive!”
Todd Fortune ambled around the counter and prodded the man toward the door. “Dumont, unless you just murdered my father, he's still alive and well and sitting over at the Merchant's in that whist game right now. If you want to go over there and talk to him about grubstaking your drinking, you go right ahead.”
Tidy Dumont lurched backwards. “Alive? They told me at the Piedmont Saloon that he was dead!”
“He's alive, alright. And don't come back in here lying to me about knowing my father.”
Suddenly, a double-sided, foot-long blade flashed out of Tidy's battered stovetop boot and began waving at Fortune. “Are you callin' me a liar?” he hollered.
Todd's assistant manager, Dub Montgomery, corralled the customers and herded them to the far wall.
“Do you see that open door?” Todd pointed toward the front of the store.
The man shot a quick glance back, and Todd yanked a nickel-plated snaffle bit off a wooden peg and hammered it into the man's wrist. The huge knife tumbled to the wooden floor. The man cursed his way back down the aisle.
“You done busted my wrist!” he thundered.
Todd scooped the knife off the floor and backed the man out of the store. Clutching his wrist, the man staggered into the street. “You cain't kick me out!” he screamed.
“I just did.”
“That's my knife!”
“I'll give it to Sheriff Bullock. You can retrieve it from him.”
“Where is the sheriff?”
“He's the fourth man in the whist game over at the hotel.”
The man meandered down the middle of the wagon-lined dirt street, staggering and shouting curses.
Carty Toluca scooted to the doorway, wiping his crisply ironed white canvas apron. “Sorry, Todd, I never know what to do with those who say they're friends of Daddy Brazos.”
“Carty, you did good. Just send that type to me. They aren't your problem.”
“So he didn't know your father at all?”
“He didn't come into the gulch with him in '75, that's for sure. If Daddy Brazos was here, he probably would have threatened to shoot the man, then given him a stake anyway.”
“Your father's a generous man.”
“But I'm a slave driver,” Todd laughed. “Let's get back to work.”
Carty followed Todd Fortune down the hardware store aisle. “This is the best place in town to work and everyone knows it. Everyone treats me nice . . . Well, almost everyone,” the young man added.
“You and Dacee June still going at it?”
“Todd, why is your little sister so mean to me?”
“Well now, Carty, you're the one that wrote all over the boardwalk that âDacee June Fortune is a blockhead.'”
“That was three years ago.”
“And then there's the time you put a dead rat in her flower basket.”
“But . . . but . . . we was jist kids then.”
“How about last year at the sack races on the Fourth of July when she beat you and you poured a gallon of lemonade on her head?”
“You don't reckon she still holds that against me, do ya?”
“Women don't forget things that easy, Carty. It might be good to remember that.”
“She ain't no woman. She's only sixteen, like me.”
“Now, Carty, you have never seen anger in your life until you tell Dacee June she isn't a woman. If you treasure a long life, it would be best you avoided telling her that.”
“A man surely has to be watchful how he talks to a girl, don't he?”
“If you've got that figured out, you're a jump ahead of most men.”
Right before noon Carty Toluca trotted into the storeroom in the back of the hardware. Todd glanced up from the stack of crates.
“Carty, I can't find any pick heads.”
“Mr. Montgomery said we sold the last one this mornin',” Toluca reported. “That man is back.”
“We've got to get that freight train in here from Sidney. There's nothing slower that an ox team, unless it's the wit of the bullwhackers.” Fortune rolled up his sleeves. “What man?”
“Mr. Skunk. You know, the bummer tryin' to get credit.”
“His name is Tidy. Can you believe that? Has he taken a bath?”
“No, sir.” Carty Toluca led the way back into the store. “You want me to get the sheriff and Daddy Brazos?”
“I'll handle it. No reason to bother them.”
“He's got an old pistol this time.”
“Is he holding it in his right hand?”
“Eh, yeah, why?”
“He's got a bum wrist. If he pulls the trigger, the backfire will probably make his hand fall off.”
Todd approached the man. An aisle of hinges and gate latches separated them. “Unless you have cash, you'll need to leave the store,” he demanded.
“I ain't never been kicked out of no store twice.”
“You have now.”
“I got me a big gun!” He waved the revolver. They were still twenty feet apart.
Dub Montgomery signaled from the doorway. “I'll go get Daddy Brazos.”
“Nope,” Todd called back. “I'll take care of this.”
Why do all my clerks think I can't get along without my father?
“Just leave the store and I won't have you arrested.”
“I ain't leavin' without money.”
“You pull that trigger and you'll miss me, injure your wrist even worse than it is, and get thrown in jail for attempted murder. That's not what you want.”
Perspiration dirt streaked down the man's flushed face. “Well, I cain't back up. I told 'em at the Piedmont that I wouldn't get shoved out again.” He lifted the gun and pointed it at Todd.
“Did you know that Walker Colt has mud in the barrel?”