The Black Hills

by William W. Johnstone

  “I just need one,” Hunter said, swinging around and heading out into the morning-shadowy barn where Dahl waited. “And I’ve already saddled him myself!”

  Hunter had picked out the best horse in Cleve’s meager lot. None looked younger than ten; they were all either overweight or bony. Most were good only for pulling a widow’s buggy to church of a Sunday morning, as long as she didn’t live far from the church.

  The sorrel Hunter had chosen was ewe-necked and knock-kneed but with only a modest layering of excess tallow padding its ribs. A glimmer of an old fire still flickered in its eyes. Hunter thought it had a fair chance of not having a heart attack before it reached the cave.

  “Ah, hell,” Dahl wheezed out as he settled himself in the saddle. He hooked the handle of his medical kit and tied the drawstring of his bandage sack around the saddle horn.

  On foot, Hunter led the sawbones and the ewe-necked sorrel to the town’s nearest edge, looking cautiously around, relatively certain that no one saw him. There were a few people out in the street now as the sun lifted its lemon head above the eastern horizon, beyond the mountain on which the King Solomon perched, but most of the folks he saw were all distracted with morning chores.

  Once on the town’s outskirts, Hunter made a beeline back toward the knoll where he’d left Nasty Pete and Bobby Lee. He jogged, the doctor keeping pace behind him but looking none too fleet in the saddle. He manhandled the sorrel’s reins so that the horse fought the bit and ringed its eyes with white.

  “Easy, Doc,” Hunter said as he ran around the backside of the butte to see Bobby Lee and Nasty Pete where he’d left them. “Lighten up on the reins or that broomtail’s gonna throw you!”

  “I told you it’s been many days since I’ve sat a saddle!” Dahl reined up behind Hunter and pointed, frowning, at Bobby Lee. “Buchanon, those beasts carry rabies!”

  Bobby Lee growled his indignation at the man.

  “All Bobby Lee carries is a grudge, so watch your back, Doc.” Hunter reined Pete around and put the spurs to him. “Come on, Doc—try to keep up!”

  * * *

  Standing on the balcony outside his second-story room in the Territorial Hotel, Sheriff Frank Stillwell tensed, grabbed the balcony’s wooden rail, and crouched defensively. A long nine smoldering between his lips, Stillwell stared over the top of the rail through a break between two buildings directly across the street.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “What’s that, honey?” a girl said in the room behind him.

  Stillwell blinked against the smoke curling up over his nose to pepper his eyes. “I’ll . . . be . . . damned.”

  The woman giggled. “What’s that all about, honey? You get the notion to take me out to breakfast, treat me like a lady for a change?”

  She giggled again.

  Stillwell’s heart chugged. Blood surged in his veins. He swung around and walked through the open French door into his suite of rooms. A large, canopied bed lay before him. A girl lay on the bed, barely concealed by a thin white sheet.

  Jane Campbell worked here in the Dakota Territorial. She prided herself on being a saloon girl and dancer, distinct from a whore. Still, she was Stillwell’s favorite whore. She was young and pretty and she sported nearly a full set of teeth. She wore some scrapes and bruises on occasion, but there wasn’t a saloon girl/dancer in Tigerville or anywhere in the Black Hills who didn’t wear the usual scars of the trade.

  Best of all, Stillwell liked how she treated him. She was special in that way, Jane was. She was known for the finer arts. That’s why Stillwell had started courting her.

  What Stillwell liked nearly as much as how Jane treated him in her own talented way was how easily he forgot about her after he’d set his hat on his head and left, knowing that the girl herself would be gone within the hour, making her way back to her own, crib-like room at the end of the second-floor hall, where she’d sleep and while away the hours until it was time to head downstairs to work.

  Knowing that he wouldn’t see her again until he felt the burning need for a woman, and he sent a boy to fetch her.

  Another thing he liked about her: Her red hair was nearly the same texture and shade as Annabelle Ludlow’s. That was all that Jane had in common with Annabelle, but when you mixed in some whiskey-fueled imagination, it was often almost enough.

  “Frank, you’re grinning like the cat that ate the canary,” Jane said now as Stillwell walked into the room, exhaling a plume of smoke toward the stamped tin ceiling.

  “I just saw something . . . or someone . . . I never expected to see in this town again. Leastways, I think it was him.”

  Frowning, dressed in only his balbriggans and a plaid robe and socks, Stillwell glanced over his shoulder. “Sure enough. Had to be. Big fella with long blond hair tumblin’ down from a Confederate gray hat. Sure enough. That was Hunter Buchanon . . . leadin’ the doc out of town. I recognized Dahl for sure—little guy with his black medical kit. Buchanon likely fetched him to tend old Angus.”

  Jane sat up in bed and widened her eyes, letting the sheet drop low. “Hunter Buchanon?”

  “That’s what I said.” Stillwell laughed, shrugging quickly out of his robe and reaching for his whipcord trousers draped over a chair arm.

  “You best be careful, Frank,” Jane warned, drawing the sheet up to cover up, looking suddenly fearful. “If that really was Hunter Buchanon, like you think it was, he might’ve come back to town to finish what he started.”

  Stillwell pulled up his pants, then froze. He lifted his head to frown over at Jane leaning back against the bed’s brass frame, her red hair hanging in mussed and tangled tresses to her pale, slender shoulders.

  “What’re you talking about? ‘Finish what he started.’” Stillwell’s eyes darkened and drew together a little, the old, gnawing anger returning. “Finish what?”

  “What?” Jane said. It was just a little peeping sound, like the sound a startled mouse makes.

  “Finish what, Jane, dear heart? What did Hunter start and didn’t finish?”

  Jane stared at Stillwell standing there about six feet beyond the foot of the bed, facing her, his pants pulled up, suspenders hanging down against each leg. Jane frowned. Then humor sparked in her pale blue eyes and her plump cheeks flushed and she chuckled throatily as she slapped a hand across her mouth.

  “Why, you know . . . the other day?” She laughed again, dropped her hand to her lap, then, her smile stiffening before disappearing altogether, she turned her head slightly and curled a lock of hair around her right index finger.

  “No, I’m unclear as to your meaning, Jane. What do you mean about the other day?”

  Jane flinched. The flush in her cheeks turned a deeper shade of rose. Another smile, even stiffer than the last, tugged at the corners of her ripe, full mouth.

  “You know, Frank. Why do you want me to say it? You know . . . the way he ran you into your office, and . . . how you ran out the back. I mean . . . you know . . . I’m not sayin’ anyone else in your place wouldn’t have done the same thing. I just mean—Frank, please don’t come over here now, honey. You know how I hate it when you get that look in your eye. Oh, please, Frank, get back . . . stop . . . stop or I’ll scree—!”

  CHAPTER 31

  Hunter pulled Nasty Pete up to the edge of the creek, then loosened the reins to let the horse drink. Pete was tired. Hunter could feel the weariness in the tightness of the muscles beneath the saddle. He hated pushing a horse as hard as he’d pushed Pete the past several hours, stretching from last night into today with damn few breaks, but he had no other choice.

  If any horse could take the wear and tear, however, that horse was Pete.

  Bobby Lee took a long drink, as well, then flopped down in the shade of a sprawling box elder, tongue drooping over his narrow jaw, bright eyes narrowed.

  Hunter glanced over his shoulder. Dahl was riding up on the ewe-necked sorrel. Hunter wasn’t sure which one looked the worse for the wear—the sorrel or Dahl. The doc
tor had opened his collar, for the day was heating up. Sweat basted his shirt and shabby wool vest to his torso and against his sides, under his arms. The doctor’s face was as pink as a doxie’s rouge, and sweat dribbled down his cheeks and soaked his scraggly, light-red mustache and goatee. His spectacles sat crooked on his nose; sweat speckled the dusty lenses.

  “Lord!” Dahl grunted as he threw his right leg over the sorrel’s rump. He dropped abruptly to the ground and stumbled backward, nearly falling.

  When he regained his balance, he lifted each foot in turn, placing his fists on his hips and turning this way and that, stretching. “I’m not cut out for this kind of abuse.”

  “You’ve got it easy, Doc.”

  “Do I?” The sawbones glared up at Hunter. “I’m the one having to doctor the men you send back to town half-alive!”

  Hunter laughed caustically. “Too damn bad! Luke Chaney and Stillwell started this whole damn thing.”

  “You can end it.”

  “I’ll end it, all right. I’ll end it when every last man who ambushed my father and brothers is dead. I saw most of ’em up close. I know who they are. I won’t rest ’til they’re dead. ’Til the men who sent them are dead.”

  Hunter was only vaguely aware of Bobby Lee pacing in the brush nearby and mewling anxiously.

  “Eventually, you’re going to play out all your aces, Buchanon. Could be today, could be tomorrow.”

  “Maybe.” Hunter nodded, staring off with a cold expression.

  Dahl walked over to the edge of the creek. He dropped to his knees, looked at Hunter over his shoulder. “Why don’t you just leave? Take your father and go. Go to Wyoming. Hell, go up to Montana. I hear there’s still plenty of unclaimed range up there. Beautiful country. Green grass stirrup-high, and plenty of wild horses along the Missouri River breaks.”

  “I’ve got a nasty habit of facing my troubles square on.”

  Dahl laughed without mirth, then dipped his hand in the stream, cupping water to his mouth, drinking. “Isn’t that just so damned noble?” He gave another caustic laugh and removed his spectacles and lowered his face to the creek, turning his head this way and that and blowing, making both horses jerk their heads up with whickering starts.

  Water dripping down his face to further soak his vest and shirt, Dahl turned to Hunter again. “You’ll die. Your father will die.” He paused then added, “She’ll die.”

  “It might not be official, but Annabelle’s a Buchanon now. Buchanons stand together. If it comes to that, we’ll die together.”

  “If Stillwell himself doesn’t run you down, her father’s men will. You probably haven’t seen what she did to her brother. It’s not pretty.”

  “He deserved what he got.”

  “Nevertheless, there’ll be a price to pay for that. And for her siding with you, a Grayback who killed Ludlow’s business partner’s son and wreaked holy hell across these hills. If Stillwell doesn’t run you down himself, he’ll bring in U.S. Marshals. Hell, maybe the cavalry from Fort Meade.”

  “Stillwell?” Hunter gave a sarcastic snort. “Hell, Stillwell’s likely in Galveston or New Orleans by now. With my thirty thousand in gold dust. He thinks I’m dead—both me and Isabelle. Dead in the mine he caved in on top of us.”

  Dahl scowled up at him, shaking his head slightly, as though trying to decipher the strange language he was suddenly speaking in now. “What are you talking about? Stillwell’s still in Tigerville. I just saw him last night. He’s brought in more men from Bismarck. Killers.”

  The doctor’s gaze drifted beyond Hunter, and he narrowed his eyes. “In fact, I think they . . . might be headed this way right now . . .”

  Just then, Bobby Lee yapped three times sharply from where the coyote sat beneath the box elder, staring back in the direction of town.

  Hunter whipped his head around. Six or seven riders were heading toward them. The men were riding single file around the base of a finger of high ground sloping into the grassy valley. They were maybe two hundred yards away, trotting their horses, holding their reins high against their chests. Their backs and shoulders were set with rigid determination.

  As Hunter stared at the pack, the lead rider suddenly threw an arm up and forward, pointing. He and the others spurred their mounts into lunging gallops.

  “Gol-darnit!” Hunter leaped out of his saddle. “Get back in the hurricane deck, Doc.” Dahl gave a yelp of indignation as Hunter grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and the waistband of his broadcloth trousers and hurled him up onto the sorrel’s back.

  “Good Christ—what in the hell are you—”

  “You head straight across this creek, Doc. Then up and over the next ridge. In the next valley, you’ll find an old horse trail. Take it southwest, following the valley floor. After a couple of hundred yards, you’ll see a cave on the slope to your left. That’s where Pa and Annabelle are. She’ll likely hail you!”

  Bobby Lee was wailing now, lifting his long, tapering snout toward the sky.

  Hunter swung up onto Nasty Pete’s back, and the grullo sidestepped anxiously, arching his neck and tail. He needed more of a rest, but he wasn’t going to get one.

  “What’re you going to do?” Dahl asked.

  “I’m going to lead them away from the cave . . . and kill ’em!” Hunter slapped the sorrel’s rump. The old horse whinnied angrily as it lunged off its rear hooves and splashed into the stream, nearly throwing its rider, who hung down the side for several perilous seconds before regaining his seat on the saddle.

  Dahl glanced anxiously back over his shoulder at Hunter, who yelled, “Keep goin’, Doc! Get the hell out of here!”

  Hunter swung Pete around and booted him back through the spare fringe of brush and aspens lining the creek. At the edge of the trees, he saw the riders closing on him now at full gallops, leaning low over their horses’ buffeting manes.

  Hunter snapped the Henry to his shoulder, ramming a fresh round into the breech, and triggered off two hasty shots. Both bullets plumed dirt to each side of the string of riders now roughly a hundred yards away, evoking a couple of audible curses and flinches.

  Giving a high, raucous Rebel yell, Hunter swung Pete hard left and put the steel to the tired stallion, who gamely churned up the ground as he headed straight west toward a pine-clad slope. Bobby Lee was a dun gray cannonball with a bushy, smoke-gray tail shooting off through the tall grass ahead and to Hunter’s right, as though leading the way.

  Hunter followed the coyote, swinging Nasty Pete out into the open, where his pursuers couldn’t help but see him and give chase, ignoring the doctor, who was likely now heading up the southern mountain. All Hunter could think about was keeping those men away from the cave, about leading them up into the high country and killing each and every one—starting with Stillwell.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Had the doctor been right? Was Stillwell still around? He must have had the gold. Why hadn’t he lit out with it? Apparently, his pride had been so battered in town the other day, when he’d leaped out his office’s back window, that after learning that Hunter and Annabelle had survived the cave-in, he’d decided to stay and finish the job he’d started.

  Hunter thought the lead rider was likely Stillwell himself, the man in the dark-brown Stetson crouched low over his claybank’s pole, holding his reins up close to his throat in one hand, a Winchester in the other hand. The claybank was gradually closing the gap between it and Hunter’s weary grullo.

  Hunter could hear Pete’s lungs working like a worn-out bellows.

  Silently Hunter cursed as Pete galloped up an incline through aspens and firs. Another glance over his shoulder told him that Stillwell was still closing on him quickly. Several other men behind him were branching off and appeared to be heading around the base of the incline, apparently intending to cut Hunter off on the other side of the mountain.

  Again, Hunter cursed. If Pete had been fresh, he’d be able to keep climbing into the large boulders and towering ponderosas that he knew c
apped the very crest of this ridge—which was called Black Mountain, a favorite hunting spot of his—but Pete just didn’t have any more fuel in the firebox.

  As he crested a shoulder of the ridge, Hunter put Pete straight out across it, the horse chugging and blowing hard, tossing its head against the bit, warm wet froth blowing back from his snout to stripe his neck and withers.

  There was little cover here atop this grassy flat. Hunter had to get down into the gorge on the other side, where he’d at least have a chance. There was cover there—trees and rocks. Maybe afoot, he could gain the high ground against his pursuers and lay into them with Shep’s Henry.

  The lip of the gorge appeared dead ahead.

  “Just a little farther, Pete,” Hunter wheezed into the ailing bronc’s right ear. “Just a little farther.”

  Pete’s front legs folded.

  The bronc whinnied shrilly as it hit the ground on its knees maybe twenty feet from the chasm yawning below. As it started to roll, Hunter kicked himself free of the stirrups and flew forward to hit the ground on his right arm and shoulder, feeling the Henry kicked out of his hand by one of the bronc’s flying hooves.

  Hunter rolled and rolled, flinging his arms out, trying to stop himself before he went over the lip of the gorge.

  “Noooo!” he cried as he suddenly felt himself dropping through the air.

  For two or three mind-numbing seconds he was weightless. He watched the steep gray slope rising in a blur around him. Then it smacked him hard, talus and gravel and powdered sandstone punching an indignant whufff of air from his lungs.

  “Ah, Jesus!” he cried and then cursed again, more severely, as he began to roll.

  It was as though he were a single craps die thrown by the fist of an angry god. He rolled . . . rolled . . . and rolled. Brush slowed him and then a boulder stopped him with a bone-jarring jolt.