The Black Hills

by William W. Johnstone

  His men, tired and weary, covered in soot and sweat, had let the brigade unravel a few minutes ago, when most of the flames had finally been doused. Now most of them stood around, eyeing the charred, smoking, glistening wet remains warily, wearily. None was fully dressed. Most wore only their wash-worn longhandles and boots. A few donned hats. Three or four had managed to pull on pants and suspenders before charging out of the bunkhouse nearly an hour ago now, to the cook’s screams of “Fire!”

  Two men were walking around the barn’s perimeter, dousing the last of the flames cropping up here and there amidst the ruins.

  Now C. J. Bonner, Ludlow’s foreman, finished talking to the bulk of his men gathered off the barn’s right front corner. As the men began trudging back to the bunkhouse to get cleaned up and to partake of their delayed breakfast, Bonner walked toward Ludlow.

  The rancher himself was still clad in only his longhandles, deerskin slippers, and bathrobe, which was fire-blackened and reeking of smoke. Ludlow had joined the brigade after he’d watched his daughter, Annabelle, gallop out of the yard, riding off to marry that damned Confederate . . . after he and Chang had gotten Cass, his badly injured son, into a bed in the house, where Chang was still tending him while they awaited the arrival of the doctor from Tigerville.

  “Well, that’s about all we can do, Mr. Ludlow,” Bonner said, walking up to stand beside the rancher and turning to face the smoldering ruins. His voice was like gravel raking through a sluice box. “We got her contained, and I reckon that’s the most we can do at this point. She’s a goner, that’s for sure.” He squinted an eye at his employer. “You know how a fire like that can spread. Lucky it didn’t take out the other two barns, the bunkhouse. Hell, sparks might’ve winged it up to the main lodge . . .”

  Bonner, a slender, long-limbed, gimlet-eyed horseman with close-cropped hair and a drooping blond mustache, let his voice trail off sheepishly. Ludlow now looked at him, riled by the man’s not-so-vaguely accusing tone that let Ludlow know just who was responsible for the fire in the first place. The rancher’s daughter, of course. Thereby involving Ludlow himself, who should have kept a tighter rein on the headstrong filly.

  At least, that was the implication.

  “I’m well aware of the possible calamity here, C.J.,” Ludlow growled.

  He thought he saw the foreman’s broad, thick shoulders tighten slightly as the man stared at the smoldering ruins.

  Still, Bonner wasn’t ready to let it go. He glanced at the thicker and older Ludlow again and said, haltingly, “You . . . you want me to get the boys saddled up, an’ . . . you know . . . maybe pay a visit over to the Buchanon ranch?”

  “No. That won’t be necessary.”

  Ludlow stared at the remains of the barn, an intoxicating mix of emotions churning inside him—rage at the loss of the barn, exasperation at what Annabelle had done to Cass. Humiliation at her involvement with Hunter Buchanon behind Ludlow’s back, despite his strictly forbidding her to see the Grayback. More rage and exasperation at where she was going at this very moment, at what she intended to do.

  Marry up into that clan of scoundrel ex-Confederates.

  He also felt stupid. Gullible beyond belief. He should have known she was meeting up with the Buchanon son on the sly. She’d mentioned having met him on one of her rides through the Hills, a couple of summers ago.

  Maybe Ludlow did know, deep down, that she was seeing that Reb. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself. He knew how stubborn Anna could be, not unlike himself in that way, and that it was damn near impossible to change her mind about any damn thing, much less a young man she’d set her hat for.

  In the past, Ludlow had been proud of his daughter’s spirit. What’s a horse without some pitch? She was tough, hardy, and strong willed. She was her father’s daughter. Like her mother, she was smart and she was beautiful.

  Now, however, she’d gone too far. She’d humiliated her father. He’d allowed her to win smaller battles in the past. Maybe he’d been saving himself for this larger one. She wouldn’t win this one. Ludlow couldn’t allow that to happen. Not if he wanted to retain any of his hard-won respect from the other tough men in these Hills, not to mention the other investors in both his ranch and his mine.

  Annabelle was going to marry whom her father told her to marry, by God. And that certainly wasn’t one of the unwashed Southern clansmen who’d killed her brother. She was going to have a very public wedding, and the groom would be Kenneth Earnshaw, despite his mealymouthed, nancy-boy demeanor and cow-stupid eyes, for he was the son of Ludlow’s valued business associate, Ferroll Earnshaw, who was helping Ludlow build the first spur railroad line into the Black Hills and which would make him and the Earnshaws—Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Earnshaw, included—the wealthiest people in the Territory if not the entire upper Midwest.

  “No, that won’t be necessary, C.J.,” Ludlow told his foreman now. “That nasty boil on my backside is likely in the process of being lanced even as we speak.”

  Ludlow looked at his sun-seasoned, blond foreman, and curled an ironic, telling smile.

  “Oh, I see,” Bonner said, nodding his understanding.

  It was well known that Ludlow had more men than the ranch hands riding for him. He and Max Chaney had hired some of the toughest men in the territory to guard their ore shipments to Cheyenne and to perform other sundry affairs that were part and parcel of surviving as a businessman in this savage place and during these unscrupulous times.

  No bona fide law had yet found its way into these Hills, which had been home to the kill-crazy Sioux only a few short years ago. That meant every man was law unto himself.

  “Get the men ready to drive that southern herd over to Hat Creek, C.J.,” Ludlow said. “On the way back, make sure no squatters have set up housekeeping on that tributary to the Little Steven. It might be government graze and officially open for homesteading, but unofficially I say it isn’t. If those squareheads from Minnesota are back, go ahead and hang the father and the oldest boy. It isn’t like we haven’t warned them. Tell the mother to be grateful for the children she has left and to head back to Minnesota. That’s where they belong!”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Ludlow,” Bonner said, giving a two-fingered salute. “I got me some new hemp that needs stretchin’, I sure do!” He gave a devilish wink. Pulling up his sagging britches, he strode in his somewhat stiff, bandy-legged horseman’s fashion over to the bunkhouse.

  Ludlow had just started in the direction of the main lodge to check on Cass when the clatter of iron-shod wheels rose on his right. He stopped and watched the black, red-wheeled single-seater chaise roll in under the portal, then angle toward him and the path leading to the main lodge.

  Doctor Norton Dahl sat in the front leather seat, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, reins in his gloved hands. His black medical kit was perched on the seat beside him.

  The sawbones stared at the smoldering barn ruins, frowning curiously, then turned to face Ludlow as he rolled the buggy past the rancher and over to one of the three iron hitchracks about halfway up the hill to the lodge, in the shade of a sprawling box elder.

  “I hear you got trouble, Ludlow,” Dahl said as he drew the roan to a halt fronting one of the racks and engaged the wagon’s brake.

  Ludlow had sent a man, Roy Finnegan, into town to fetch the doctor for Cass. He saw Finnegan now, galloping around a bend in the trail, a hundred yards distant but closing fast. He’d likely stopped for a snort or two in a Tigerville saloon, thinking he could catch up to the doctor before Dahl reached the Broken Heart.

  The rancher snorted his self-directed reproof. You can’t send an Irishman to town and not expect him to throw back a shot or two of Taos lightning. Ludlow continued up the path toward the lodge, Dahl falling into step beside him. “He’s in a bad way, Doc. Burned pretty bad on his head. For the love of God, half his hair is gone!”

  “What the hell happened?” Dahl asked. He was a seedy-looking man in his late thirties. He had long, stringy, san
dy hair and an untrimmed mustache and goatee. He was too pale, and he was scrawny and smelled bad, as though he rarely bathed, and he gambled and whored too much. The Tigerville whores were free as long as he tended their sundry health problems—pregnancy and Cupid’s itch being at the forefront of their afflictions, not to mention the occasional stabbings by drunk or otherwise disgruntled clients.

  Some said that Dahl himself had a couple of orphans running around the Hills.

  His cheap wool suit was rank with sweat and spilled ale and tobacco smoke, causing Ludlow to wince but also to remind himself that there were many men in the Hills, maimed from mining accidents or the bloody skirmishes drunk miners were forever getting into, armed with picks and shovels, who would otherwise be dead if not for Dahl’s creative ministrations.

  “The hand you sent for me said something about Miss Ludlow . . . ?” the doctor probed as, breathless from the climb from the yard, the rancher led the sawbones up the veranda’s broad front steps.

  “Blast Finnegan!”

  Ludlow stopped and rammed his fist into his open palm. He glared back down the hill toward the corral in which the Irish hand was just then turning out his lathered mount.

  “I told him to keep his damn trap shut about that. He was to fetch you out here and keep his damn mouth shut. Probably shot his mouth off in the saloons too. By now it’s halfway around the Hills!”

  Ludlow turned to the sawbones, who stood two steps below him, cowering a little. “Uh, sorry about that, Mr. Ludlow. Rest assured I myself am rather good at keeping secrets. A man in my line has to be. You’d be surprised who in these Hills is on tincture of mercury for the pony drip.” He gave a wry smile. “You know what they say—a night in the arms of Venus leads to a lifetime on Mercury!”

  He snorted a laugh. Ludlow could smell whiskey on his breath.

  The rancher cursed, then led the sawbones into the house, up the stairs, and down the carpeted hall. Cass’s bellowing curses emanated from behind a closed door on the right side of the hall, directly across from Ludlow’s own room, at the end. The rancher cast a look at the key still in the lock of Annabelle’s closed door, and muttered another oath of his own.

  Devil child. And all this time he’d thought she was just headstrong.

  Ludlow threw open his son’s door and moved into the room, drawing the door wide for the doctor, who doffed his hat and threw it onto a chair. Cass lay writhing on the bed before the door, belly-down, holding his arms up around his head as though shielding himself from further injury. Chang hovered over the young man, on the bed’s far side from the door, trying to apply ointment to the side of Cass’s head.

  Cass cursed and howled every time the stocky Chinaman tried to smear arnica on the burn that had turned the left side of his head, including his ear, to ground burger. Pus already dribbled from the gaping sores.

  “Get away from me with that poison!” Cass bellowed, turning his head to glare at the Chinaman. “It burns like hell’s fires!”

  “Thank you, Chang,” said Dahl, moving up to the bed, holding his medical kit in both hands before him. “I’ll take over now.”

  Chang gathered his medicines onto a tin tray and shuffled toward the door, pausing to bow before his employer. Chang glanced from Ludlow to the howling young man flopping around on the bed, then returned his dark, bleak-eyed gaze to the rancher and shook his head.

  He shuffled on out of the room, muttering under his breath.

  “Look at me, Doc!” Cass intoned, lifting his head so Dahl could get a look at him. “Look at what she did to me! That Rebel’s whore!”

  “Cass, I’ll have none of that!” Ludlow walked over to the bed’s far side, wincing at the grisly spectacle of his once-handsome son’s ugly, oozing head. “You stop with the foul language! Stop slandering your sister!”

  “She’s a Rebel’s whore, Pa! You an’ I both know it! If your hands don’t kill both of ’em, then I will!” Cass turned to Dahl, who’d set his kit on the bed and was crouched over the young man, staring distastefully down at his head. The doctor stretched his lips back from tobacco-stained teeth.

  “How bad is it, Doc?” Cass asked. “Will my hair grow back? Will I heal an’ look normal again?”

  Dahl continued to stare down at the young man’s head.

  Slowly, he shuttled a dark, foreboding look toward Ludlow and then stiffly opened his medical kit. “Oh . . . oh . . . I’ve seen far . . . far worse burns than this,” he said, though his tone was hardly reassuring.

  Ludlow turned away and drew a ragged sigh, hardening his jaws against his own fury.

  All that Cass had had going for him was his looks. The boy was cow-stupid and lazy. But at least he had thick, curly hair and a dimple-cheeked smile, which had attracted the women, even though he seemed to prefer percentage girls for some reason. Ludlow had been sure, however, that sooner or later the young firebrand would settle down and let his father marry him off to one of Ludlow’s business associate’s comely daughters.

  Now, however, the rancher doubted that would happen.

  Ludlow had seen what a bad burn could do to a man’s face. Cass’s looks were gone for good, which meant he had nothing. He’d likely be living right here in the house, a ghost of his former self—an ugly specter—confined to his room, from which all looking glasses would be banished.

  Unable to listen to his son’s unmanly howling any longer, Ludlow left the room and went downstairs.

  He walked out onto the veranda. He fished a half-smoked cigar from a pocket of his robe, scratched a lucifer to life on the porch rail, and touched the flame to the end of the stogie.

  Taking the peppery, bracing smoke deep into his lungs, he looked toward the southwest, in the direction of the Buchanon 4-Box-B spread.

  A grim, hard smile tugged at his mouth as he imagined the current course of events in that direction.

  CHAPTER 16

  Hunter and Annabelle had found their horses and Hunter’s pack mule spread out along the forested slope fronting the old prospector’s cabin, grazing with their reins drooping. Hunter had left the mule, knowing the animal would follow him home at its own pace.

  He and Annabelle had swung up into their saddles and taken off at a hard gallop for the 4-Box-B. Now as they closed on the ranch, Hunter could hear the shooting clearly. The rifle cracks and echoing rips rose from the other side of a pine-studded haystack butte just ahead.

  Movement caught Hunter’s eye ahead and on his right, and he jerked his head to see a dun shape leap onto a rock beside the trail.

  “Bobby!” Hunter cried.

  The coyote sat atop the rock, fidgeting and mewling, deeply troubled. He gave three quick, yammering yips, then leaped down off the rock and fell into pace beside Hunter’s and Annabelle’s galloping mounts, stretching out low to the ground. Leaning forward over their galloping horses’ polls, Hunter and Annabelle exchanged dark glances.

  Hunter swung his horse up the side of a high bluff on his left. Near the top he stepped out of the saddle and ran up to the crest of the bluff, doffing his hat as he dropped to his knees. Annabelle scuttled up beside him while Bobby Lee held back with the horses, sitting down in the shade of a chokecherry shrub, thick tail curled forward, mewling anxiously.

  Hunter peered over the top of the bluff and gazed down through thick, columnar pines and firs. The 4-Box-B headquarters lay in a grassy clearing below, in a hollow surrounded by pine-studded buttes. It was a humble place, consisting of a handful of hand-adzed log buildings, including a single barn and several corrals and a round breaking corral with a snubbing post. The main house sat on the opposite side of the yard from the butte atop which Hunter and Annabelle hunkered.

  They were facing the rear of the barn and blacksmith shop, Angus’s brew shed, and the springhouse. Smoke fluttered up from the blacksmith shop’s brick chimney, hanging thick and blue in the still air. Earlier this morning, Shep must have fired up his forge and was likely making repairs to the hay rake he’d been working on yesterday, when Hunter h
ad started for town with Angus’s ale.

  Shep must have been in the shop this morning when the attackers had struck.

  Now two bodies lay in the yard between the barn and the long, low, log-walled, shake-roofed dwelling that was the Buchanon ranch house. They were spread out about twenty feet apart, one lying in front of the blacksmith shop. Even from this distance, Hunter could tell the body in front of the shop was Shep. It was larger than the other one, and clad in the thick, brown leather apron Shep always wore when he was at work at his bellows and forge.

  Something long and slender lay several feet away from Shep. Likely Shep’s prized Henry repeater. The eldest of the Buchanon boys never strayed far from his rifle.

  The other body, nearer the house, appeared to be that of Tyrell. Even lying splayed out on the ground, one leg curled beneath the other, the body was long and slender. The boy’s long red hair shone in the sun.

  Neither Shep nor Tye was moving.

  The men who’d shot them and were continuing to exchange fire with the cabin were moving around in the brush behind and between the barn, corral, springhouse, and blacksmith shop. There were a dozen, at least.

  Hunter could see six or seven men, but smoke puffed from more guns than that, the puffs indicating that the attackers had formed a ragged semicircle around the front of the cabin. One man appeared to be trying to move around behind it. He was in the pines to the right of the ranch yard, shooting as he darted behind trees.

  Old Angus was returning fire from the broken-out windows of the cabin, moving from window to window, smoke puffing first from one and then from another. Between shots, Hunter could hear the old, one-armed Rebel cussing a blue streak. Hunter couldn’t hear what he was saying from this distance of a hundred yards, but he knew Angus well enough to know he was giving his attackers holy hell.

  Hunter’s heart was racing. Tears were oozing from his eyes and dribbling down his cheeks. He looked again at Shep and Tyrell lying motionless in the yard, Shep likely having run out of the blacksmith shop when the ambushers had opened up on the cabin. Tyrell, young and hotheaded, had run out of the cabin to return fire. His own rifle lay near his outstretched right hand.