The Black Hills

by William W. Johnstone

  The black-bearded gunman gave her a brusque shove away from him. “Sorry, sweetheart. I reckon you should’ve aimed better!”

  He and the other men around him laughed. Except for Hank Mitchum. He stood crouched low behind the bar, his own frightened eyes on Stillwell now as the sheriff stepped around the gruesomely grinning Pee-Wee, lips quirking a savage smile beneath his thick, brown mustache, as the sheriff made his way toward Jane.

  The saloon girl screamed again as she swung around and dashed up the stairs, one hand on the rail, her long hair dancing like a red curtain across her back.

  Stillwell gained the bottom of the steps and raised the .44.

  “No, Frank!” bellowed Hank Mitchum.

  Stillwell fired up the stairs until his Colt’s hammer dropped with a dull ping against the firing pin.

  Jane’s bullet-riddled body rolled back down the stairs to lie faceup at Stillwell’s boots. Dull with death, her eyes stared up at him. Blood oozed out one corner of her cracked and swollen mouth.

  The room was silent for a good thirty seconds. Outside, the street was silent too.

  Mort Rucker raked his shocked gaze from the pretty saloon girl to Stillwell, who was fumbling around with his gun, trying to reload, though the bullet-torn left hand made the maneuver awkward and painful. His own powder smoke wafted around him, stinking up the entire saloon.

  “Stillwell, you’re a crazy son of a bitch,” Rucker said. “She didn’t deserve that!”

  Stillwell cursed as he continued reloading, the empty shell casings rolling around on the floor between his boots and Jane’s bloody body.

  “You hear me, Stillwell!” Rucker said.

  Stillwell clicked the Colt’s loading gate closed, spun the cylinder, turned, and shot Rucker through the chest.

  Rucker hadn’t expected it. He’d only had his right hand closed over the grips of his own pistol, but the Schofield was still in its holster. Now he jerked back with the impact of the bullet, his lower jaw hanging slack with shock. He glared at Stillwell, his face twisting in pain and rage. He tried to wrench the Schofield free of its holster, but then his knees buckled.

  They hit the floor with a thunderous boom.

  He fell straight for ward onto his face and lay quivering as he died.

  Stillwell slid the gun toward the other men standing to the right of where Rucker had been standing. He jabbed the still-smoking Colt toward Rucker’s partner, Kleinsasser.

  “Any hard feelin’s, Henry?”

  Kleinsasser stared down at the pistol aimed at his belly, and made a sour expression. “No . . . no, I, uh . . . reckon not.” He right eye twitched as he raised his gaze to Stillwell.

  “How ’bout you two?” Stillwell asked Weed Zorn, standing a few feet away from Kleinsasser.

  “Hell, I don’t care who you kill, Frank!” He laughed.

  Stillwell slid the Colt past Zorn to Klaus Steinbach, who raised his hands shoulder high, fingers curled toward his palms. He chuckled.

  “Easy, Frank. Easy, now. We’re friends here—you and Weed an’ me. Heck, I hadn’t knowed Rucker from Adam’s off-ox before this mornin’. Now, the girl was right purty, but I reckon she was purtier before you messed her face up.”

  He shrugged, his broad smile in place. “No skin off my nose.”

  “Easy, Frank,” Zorn said, frowning down at the gun in Stillwell’s hand. “Easy, easy, easy.” He gave a nervous chuckle.

  Stillwell turned to Hank Mitchum glaring at him from the other side of the bar. “What do you say, Hank?”

  Mitchum just stared at him, his round face creased distastefully. Finally, he said, “Christ!” He walked out from behind the bar, picked up the dead saloon girl, and carried her out through the arched doorway into the lobby, then out onto the veranda, heading for the undertaker, no doubt.

  On his way through the arched doorway, he passed Graham Ludlow. The rancher/mine owner stood with his hat in his hands, staring stony faced at the dead girl in the bartender’s arms. He turned to stare after Mitchum and Jane, then sauntered into the saloon.

  Stillwell holstered his pistol and ripped a handkerchief out of his back pocket. He wrapped it tightly around his wounded hand and stumbled around behind the bar. He pulled a bottle of good rye off a shelf, grabbed two shot glasses off a pyramid atop the bar, and walked over to where Ludlow sat at the table at which Stillwell had been sitting and on which his dark-brown Stetson remained.

  Stillwell cursed as he sat down in his chair. He set the bottle and the glasses on the table, then leaned forward, squeezing his left hand with his right hand in his lap, gritting his teeth against the god-awful pain.

  Ludlow regarded the man with amusement.

  Then he popped the cork on the bottle, poured them each a drink, and said, “Well, you’ve proven you can kill a saloon girl.” He tossed back half his shot. “How ’bout now we discuss Hunter Buchanon?”

  CHAPTER 36

  Using a leather swatch so he wouldn’t burn his hand, Hunter removed the pot from the fire and refilled his and Annabelle’s coffee cups.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” Annabelle said as she chopped up for the breakfast skillet a bloody haunch from the deer Hunter had killed earlier that morning.

  Hunter smiled at her as he returned the pot to the tripod’s hook. “Don’t mention it, milady.”

  “Lady. Mhmmm. I’m not sure many would describe me as a lady. Not after last night.” She gave a raspy chuckle.

  Last night, their second night together here after the doctor had tended Angus, they’d stolen off in the brush together for a “rascally hoedown,” as old Angus himself would have called it. They’d acted quickly . . . though not to either one’s dissatisfaction . . . so as not to leave Angus alone for too long.

  Or to let their guards down against a possible attack from their enemies. Breathless but sated, they’d returned to the fire and snuggled down together, each with a cup of the old man’s Scottish ale, to stare up at the black velvet sky flour-dusted with shimmering stars.

  Hunter was recovering well from the dragging. He was still stiff and sore, but no Buchanon had ever let a little stiffness and soreness keep him from enjoying his lady.

  “You’ll always be a lady to me, Anna,” Hunter said, gazing across the fire at the young woman with open admiration and affection. “A wild lady, maybe, but a lady just the sa—”

  “Do you two think you could hold off on makin’ goo-goo eyes at each other long enough to bring me a cup o’ that mud? Smells powerful good!”

  They both whipped their heads toward Angus in shock.

  “Pa?” Hunter set his cup down and rose, hurrying over to kneel down beside the old man. Blue eyes stared up at him as clear as the morning sky. “You’re awake.” He placed the back of his hand across Angus’s leathery forehead and turned to Anna. “Fever must’ve broke!”

  “How long was I out, anyways?”

  “Three or four days, Pa. You cut out on us just after we got you up here. I brought the doc out to have a look at you. He must be better than most folks give him credit for.”

  “Dahl was out here?”

  “That’s right, Angus.” Annabelle had come over to kneel on the other side of the old man from his son. She held a cup out to him. “Here you go. Careful, it’s hot.”

  Angus lifted his head and wrapped his gnarled, brown hand around the blue-speckled cup. “Thank you, sweet. I think it was the smell o’ this that woke me. The only thing I like better than hot black coffee is cool black ale!” Angus smacked his lips. “Whoops!”

  The hot cup sagged in his hand, some of the brew dribbling down the sides and onto his covers.

  “Here, Pa—I’ll hold it for you,” Hunter said, taking the cup. He tipped it to Angus’s bearded face. The old man blew ripples on it, sipped, smacked his lips again. “That’s so good! Never even knew how good it was. One more.”

  Hunter tipped the cup again, and Angus sipped, slurping it over the rim and into his mouth.

  “Do you think you can
eat something?” Annabelle asked him.

  Angus frowned, thinking, then his gaze brightened. “You know, I think I could.”

  “I’ll be hanged—you are getting better,” Hunter said with relief. He hadn’t realized how the dull, rusty knife of worry had been poking him. Now it was finally giving some ground.

  “Good,” Annabelle said. “I’m fixing venison stew with wild onions. I’ll get back to it . . . let you fellas talk.” She glanced at Hunter, meaningfully, then strode back to the fire.

  “Venison. Mmmm,” Angus said. “Where’d you shoot the deer?”

  “Didn’t shoot it. Snared it, cut its throat. I was worried the shot might be heard.”

  Angus smiled admiringly up at his son. “We named you right, your dear ma an’ me.” His gaze darkened. “Speakin’ of huntin’, you get that Chaney bunch yet? You get all them that killed Shepfield and Tyrell?”

  “I got most of ’em, Pa. Those that aren’t dead are wishing they were. Dahl told me Max Chaney’s dead. Billy’s dead. Pee-Wee is one o’ them wishin’ he was dead too.”

  “Well, hell, boy—we still out here on account o’ me? Load me back into the wagon. I’m ready to go—”

  Angus stopped. He gazed darkly up at his son. His mouth opened and tears glazed his eyes. His voice wheezed up from his sparrow-like chest, high and thin and forlorn as a death dirge. “They burned us out, didn’t they?”

  Hunter drew a deep breath.

  “Ah, hell!” Angus rested his head back against his pallet and ground the back of his fists against the cave floor. “Ah, hell! We built that place from the ground up . . . by the sweat of our brows!”

  “We’ll get us a new place, Pa. Somewhere new. We’ll make a fresh start.”

  “Fresh start?”

  Hunter glanced behind him. He and Anna shared a look.

  Turning back to his father, he said, “Me an’ Anna . . . we think it’s time to pull our picket pins, Pa. Time to pull out. Find another place to build a ranch. I was thinkin’ of Montana.”

  “Montana, hell!” Angus was sobbing through his rage, tears pooling in his anguished eyes. “This was our home. We built it ourselves. We ain’t gonna be run out, boy. A Buchanon don’t run. Or, if he does, he runs toward trouble!” He spat the last two words out in an impotent fury, spittle flying from his lips, his face swelling up and turning red. A muscle twitched beneath his left eye.

  Hunter placed a hand on the old man’s spindly shoulder. “Easy, Pa, easy! Settle down, now, or you’ll give yourself a stroke.”

  “Ah, prairie oysters,” Angus lamented, turning his head from side to side, stretching his thin cracked lips back from his teeth. “My oldest and youngest boys dead. The ranch burned. Likely the stock all run off, maybe dead. And here I lay, useless as a hind-tit calf!”

  Hunter pulled a whiskey bottle out of a sack beside him, near where Angus’s double-bore, twelve-gauge shotgun leaned against the cave wall. He dribbled a little of the whiskey into the coffee cup. When he’d returned the bottle to the sack, he lifted the cup. “Here, Pa. Spiced it up for you. Good medicine.”

  When he’d helped Angus to a couple sips of the spiked coffee, he set the cup down beside the pallet. He gazed down at the miserable old man and said, “If we stay here, there’ll be no end to it. We’ll die, Pa. All three of us. We’re gonna get you out of here. We’re gonna build a new home elsewhere.”

  “Leave me here.”

  Angus had lost all of the vim and vinegar he’d awakened with only a few minutes ago. Now he looked like a hollow shell of his former self once more, eyes drawn, cheeks sallow. The skin of his face was like that of a worn, empty leather sack. “I wanna die right here. You two go. Get married. Have you some kids. God knows I don’t blame you for that. I want you to. Me? I just wanna die. Bury me with Shep and Tyrell.”

  “You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten, Angus,” Annabelle said gently, kneeling by the fire and stirring the stew hanging from the tripod. She looked deeply worried.

  “I ain’t hungry,” Angus rasped. The words sounded like a small breeze caressing a slender reed before dying.

  * * *

  After they’d eaten and Hunter had helped Anna clean the dishes with water from the barrel strapped to the wagon, he set his hat on his head. “I think it’ll be time to go soon. Maybe tomorrow. The next day at the latest.”

  “What about Angus?”

  They both looked at the old man once again slumbering on his pallet, snoring softly.

  “I got a bad feelin’, Anna. That bullet might not have killed him, but I have a feelin’ those peckerwoods burnin’ the ranch did the job.” Hunter shook his head, at war with his agony, his rage. “I don’t think he’s gonna make it. I think they killed him.” He drew a breath, let it out slow. “I think we’ll be able to pull out, either with him or without him, tomorrow or the next day, sure enough. A day’ll probably tell.”

  Hunter grabbed his rifle and his saddle.

  “What are you going to do?” Annabelle asked him.

  “I’m gonna ride back to the ranch, see if there’s anything worth salvaging.” Hunter lowered his gaze in defeat to the ground, shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’d just like to have one last look at the place. Maybe say a few words to Shep an’ Tye.”

  He looked at the dark forest running along the base of the ridge, alive with chirping birds and quarreling squirrels. “I took a good look around earlier. Didn’t see any sign of anyone. I think we’re all right for now. Maybe Stillwell and the others from Tigerville came to the same decision we have—there’s been enough bloodshed.”

  “You think that’s possible?”

  “I’d like to think so.” Hunter leaned toward her, kissed her soft, pliant lips. “I’ll be back soon. If there’s trouble, fire two quick shots. I’ll be back in no time.”

  “All right.” Anna nodded, smiled weakly. She seemed to feel as dour as Hunter did. After all, they were homeless, their future uncertain. “Be safe out there.”

  “I will.”

  “Hunter!”

  He stopped, turned back to her. She ran to him and hugged him. They held each other tightly. When they separated, Hunter made his way down the steep slope from the cave.

  Anna called, “Think ahead, not behind.”

  He smiled back at her and continued on down the slope toward where the two horses were picketed at the edge of the trees.

  Bobby Lee lay in the shade of a giant fir. He was busily cleaning the bones of a recent rabbit kill, snarling scrappily, flicking his bushy tail.

  “Come on, killer,” Hunter said. “Let’s take us a ride.”

  * * *

  In an upstairs room at the Purple Garter Saloon in Tigerville, Dr. Norton Dahl said, “Prepare yourself, Minnie. And you might want to open that window a little wider.”

  “Why’s that, Doc?”

  Dahl was slowly, gently unwrapping a heavy cambric bandage from around the leg of Willie Heaton, who lay moaning and groaning on the small bed, pressing the heels of his hands to his temples. “I can tell from the discoloration around the bandage that . . .”

  The doctor pulled the bandage free of the bullet wound, making a face against the stench of vituperating flesh. “Yes, just as I thought, gangrene has set in. Damn it all, anyway!”

  “Phew!” said Minnie, who generally performed her function in the Purple Garter in this very room but in the bed and on her back. In the upright position, she often helped Dahl. Now she stumbled back against the window, waving a hand in front of her face as though trying to clear the sickly, musky stench from the air. “Boy, you were right, Doc.” She choked, stifled a gag.

  “What’s goin’ on, Doc?” Heaton asked. “Jesus God—what’s that awful smell?”

  Dahl glanced at Minnie, a pretty brunette with a heart-shaped face, her hair cut short just beneath her ears. She was a frail girl with a frank and open personality, which made her a favorite with the miners from the King Solomon. “You all right, dear?”

  “I’m
fine, Doc. Just caught me off guard for a second’s all. Don’t worry about me. I’m not about to run out on you. My pa was a sawbones back in Iowa, don’t ya know, and I started helpin’ him when I was half as high as our kitchen table.”

  Dahl was examining Heaton’s open wound, still making a face. “Your pa was a sawbones, you say? So what got you into your current line of work?”

  “Pa caught the Cupid’s itch an’ Ma shot him. Turns out he hadn’t saved a dime. Spent whatever he made—and it wasn’t much in the small town we lived in—on whores.”

  “So you became one yourself?”

  “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” Minnie said, chuckling. “That’s what I always say!”

  Dahl gave a snort.

  “I hate to interrupt your cozy conversation with Miss Minnie, Doc,” Heaton barked, “but what in the hell is that awful stink?” He was breathing hard and he was bathed in sweat, his short, curly blond hair matted to his head. He was twenty-six or -seven and worked as an ore loader up at the King Solomon.

  “You, I’m sorry to say,” Dahl said, straightening as he continued staring down at the man’s leg. “Gangrene has set in, Willie. I tried to keep it out, but sometimes the damn affliction has a mind of its own. If you’d gotten to me sooner, I maybe could have done more for you.”

  “I was layin’ out there for two days before that prospector picked me up. If he hadn’t come along, I’d still be out there.” Heaton ground his teeth. “That blasted Buchanon!” He arched his back on the bed and scrunched up his face, causing the cords in his neck to stand out. “He’s gonna die slow, I tell you! He’s gonna die slow, that murderin’ heathen!”

  Dahl looked at the man skeptically, said in a patient, reasonable tone, “Well, Willie, did you not ride out there and burn the man’s ranch? Weren’t you of the same group that murdered his brothers and severely wounded his father?”

  “No!” Willie wailed, panting against the pain. “I mean . . . leastways I rode with them fellas both nights. I might’ve sunk one bullet into the oldest brother, but it was some others that set the fire. I turned the stock loose that night. Pee-Wee Chaney wanted to shoot all the horses, but I couldn’t set with that. So I opened the barn and the corral gate and chased all the horses out.”