The Black Hills

by William W. Johnstone

  Ludlow set his crisp, cream Stetson on his head and started down the slope. After a half dozen steps, he stopped.

  A horse and rider were moving around the base of a low hill, coming into Ludlow’s view now. The rider rode as though he were all loose joints and limbs held together by thin threads. The horse didn’t look any more comfortable with the rider on his back than the rider himself appeared to be comfortable sitting the western stockman’s saddle. Round spectacles glinted on the rider’s nose.

  At first, Ludlow thought: Dahl. The doctor had come to give them more grief.

  But no. As the rider approached, the horse swinging its head to look warily at its rider, its eyes ringed with white as it fought the bit held too tightly back in its mouth, Ludlow saw the diminutive but well-dressed visage of his son-in-law-to-be. Kenneth Earnshaw wore riding trousers and knee-high riding boots. A round-brimmed beaver hat sat back at an angle off his pale, pimply forehead.

  Around the outside of his tweed coat, which he wore over a white silk shirt with a ruffled front, he’d buckled a pair of the prettiest, pearl-butted, silver-chased Colt pistols Ludlow had ever seen. They appeared brand-new, as did the fancy, black leather, hand-tooled holsters that housed them. Both scabbards appeared as stiff as new boots fresh off the cobbler’s bench.

  “I’ll be damned,” Ludlow said.

  Stillwell stood beside him. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Kenneth Earnshaw.”

  “Who the hell is Kenneth Earnshaw?”

  Ludlow didn’t answer him. He stood scowling at the young man on the discomfited horse, who drew up now within ten feet and stopped, still fighting the bit.

  “Kenneth?” Ludlow said, deeply incredulous. “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  Earnshaw wobbled in the saddle, even though the horse was no longer moving. He held out a hand toward his would-be-father-in-law-to-be, palm out. Then he lifted the bottle he held in his right hand. It was a brandy bottle. Ludlow thought the label said Spanish brandy. Expensive stuff. Kenneth tucked the bottle’s lip between his own, threw his head back, and took a couple of deep swallows.

  “Why, he’s three sheets to the wind!” Bonner said, chuckling.

  The other men laughed.

  “Who is he?” Stillwell said, his exasperation growing.

  Ludlow vaguely heard Bonner mutter a response to the sheriff. The rancher watched Earnshaw pull the bottle down, ram a cork into its lip, and run a sleeve of his dusty tweed coat across his mouth. “Now, then”—he hiccupped—“let’s get after her!”

  “What?” Ludlow said.

  “Mr. Ludlow, you said that if I wanted your daughter’s hand, I had to fight for it. Well, I saw you men ride out of town earlier, and I suspected that you were on the trail of Annabelle and that . . . that . . . that lowdown, dirty, Confederate devil! Well, I am here to play my part. I am here to fight for the woman I love and wish to marry!”

  “Christ, man,” Ludlow exclaimed. “You’re drunk as a lord!”

  “I may have indulged in a wee bit much of the liquid courage, but courage it has given me, sir. As well as soothed the rawness in my arse.” Earnshaw shifted around in his saddle, wincing. “These western range saddles are a bit rigid, are they not?”

  “You’d best go back to the Purple Garter,” Ludlow said. “You’re liable to fall off that horse and kill yourself. I’d hate to have to share that bit of bad news with your father.” He said to Bonner out the side of his mouth, “Might strain our business relationship, don’t ya know.”

  He gave a wry chuff.

  Bonner snorted a laugh.

  “I insist, Mr. Ludlow.” Earnshaw tossed the bottle away. It shattered on a rock. “There—I’m through! I am ready to split the wind and fog the sage!” He patted his holstered pistols. “I bought these two smoke wagons the other day from a traveling gun drummer. A fine pair, indeed, and I am ready to put them to good use.”

  He added in a mocking, badly overdone and stiffly manufactured western brogue: “This day, I’m a gonna kill me a yaller-bellied Grayback dog! Gonna fill him so fulla lead that rattlesnake’s gonna rattle when he walks!”

  He gave a hoot and slapped his thigh.

  “Christ,” Ludlow said with a sigh. “Well, all right. Have it your way. If you want to try to give a good accounting of yourself with the intention of winning Annabelle’s hand—well, I reckon that’s more honorable than lying around, diddling the doxies in the Purple Garter. I don’t have time to worry about you, though, so try to keep up!”

  Earnshaw grinned and gave an awkward salute.

  Ludlow turned to Bonner. “It looks like Buchanon is headed west, possibly toward his ranch. I want you and the other men to cut him off. Take him down. Burn him down, you understand! This ends now. Right here today!”

  He turned to Stillwell. “You and I and Earnshaw here will ride to the cave and get Anna.”

  “I wanna ride into the face of that devil!” Earnshaw exclaimed.

  “You’ll face devil enough in that cave,” Ludlow told him. “If that one-armed old Rebel is still alive, he’ll put up a fight. As will Anna.” He glared at Stillwell. “Fight though she might, I want her unscathed, you understand? Any man who so much as musses a hair on her head will answer to me!”

  He looked around Stillwell at Zorn and Steinbach, who grinned and hiked their shoulders, shrugging.

  Stillwell turned to Bonner. “Take Buchanon alive. I want the final honors.” He glanced at Ludlow. “I think I’ve earned that.”

  Ludlow thought it over. He turned to Bonner, said begrudgingly, “Take him alive if you can. Drag him back to the ranch. We’ll be headed there once we’ve gotten my daughter on a leash.”

  “You got it, Mr. Ludlow.”

  Bonner swung his horse around. “Let’s go, boys!”

  He galloped off toward the southwest, the other twelve men falling into line behind him, putting the spurs to their mounts.

  Ludlow turned to Stillwell standing beside him, staring after Bonner and the other riders. “I’d have thought you’d want to join them, Sheriff. I’d have thought you’d want to face Hunter Buchanon man-to-man . . . after all that’s happened between you.”

  He’d threaded his tone with not-so-vague mockery.

  Stillwell turned to the older man and gave an icy smile. “I got a feelin’ that I’m still gonna have the chance. I got me a feelin’ that your daughter’s gonna be the bait that leads him into the final trap.”

  “Pshaw!” Ludlow laughed. “You think he’ll go through all thirteen of my riders? Those are all tough men. Cold-steel savvy. That’s why I hired ’em!”

  “I’m just sayin’.” Stillwell glanced at Zorn and Steinbach and then turned to his horse. He grabbed the saddle horn and lifted his left foot to toe the stirrup but, being unable to use his left hand again, made the maneuver awkward if not downright perilous.

  He missed the stirrup and fell against the claybank with a curse.

  “You need help, Sheriff?” Ludlow said, swinging into his saddle and grinning smugly down at the gimpy lawman.

  Stillwell cast the man a hard glare and swung into the leather with a pained grunt. He turned to the old rancher and said, “A thousand dollars when we’ve gotten your daughter back to the ranch. Another thousand for Hunter Buchanon.”

  “A thousand dollars for each of us,” Steinbach said, wanting to make sure the terms were clear. He smiled with challenge at Stillwell. “An extra thousand for the one who brings down Buchanon. Uh . . . if your own riders don’t, of course!”

  He grinned through his thick, black beard.

  “That’s what we agreed to, gentlemen,” Ludlow said, touching spurs to his stallion’s flanks. “I’m a man who keeps my word. You don’t last long in business by breaking it even once.”

  Stillwell nudged his horse over to where Kenneth Earnshaw sat his fidgety steel-dust, appearing as though he was having trouble keeping his head up. The pasty-faced young man’s eyes were loose and red. “You really gonna
make that girl marry this nancy boy?” he asked Ludlow. “Seems a shame to waste a filly like that on a stud like this . . . if you can call him that.”

  Kenneth jerked his head back as though he’d been slapped. He blinked hard. “Pardon me?”

  “Yes,” Ludlow said, gritting his teeth in anger. “Yes, I am. Now more than ever!”

  He swung his horse around and booted it into a gallop.

  CHAPTER 39

  Hunter drew back on Nasty Pete’s reins, stopping the horse off the ranch yard’s southwest corner.

  The hill on which he’d buried his brothers and where the tree honoring their mother grew rose on his right. The house and barn and corrals lay ahead.

  He drew a slow, deep breath.

  He’d thought he’d prepared himself for what he would find here, but there was no preparing yourself to see your home burned. His heart thudded heavily. A cold stone lay in his belly. He closed his eyes as though to wipe the images from his retinas, but when he opened them again, the scene was still there.

  The house was all charred rubble and fire-blackened timbers. Two walls remained standing, but they appeared so insubstantial that the next slightest breeze would likely topple them. The stone chimney and hearth stood, as well, but as black as coal.

  Bobby Lee sat on the slope to Hunter’s left, moaning.

  “Come on, Bobby, let’s have a look,” he said softly, dreadfully, and nudged the grullo forward. Nasty Pete lifted his head to sniff the air, twitching his ears. He seemed to be feeling as heartsick as Hunter was. After all, this had been the stallion’s home as well.

  Bobby Lee followed just behind the grullo, moaning and yipping softly, pausing now and then to sniff the charred rubble.

  Hunter rode wide around the house, knowing without looking too closely—unable to look too closely—that there was nothing left. Nothing useable, anyway. Then, again, he’d known there wouldn’t be. He’d only used that possibility as an excuse to pay a visit here. He’d had to see it for himself. He’d had to visit his brothers’ graves one more time.

  Trying hard to keep his sorrow and rage on a short leash, he rode around the house and then across the yard to the east, making a cursory inspection of the other outbuildings, including Angus’s brew shed and Shep’s blacksmith shop. All had been burned. The Halladay Standard windmill had been toppled. It lay like a child’s giant toy lying across the stock tank—an accusing finger pointing toward town.

  The buildings and the corrals were no more than rubble. At least the horses had not been shot and burned as well. At least someone in the group of cowardly cutthroats had valued the four-legged stock enough to have opened the gate and turned them loose. He could tell no stock had been in the barn, because he knew that smell from the war, and he didn’t detect it here.

  At the edge of the yard covered in gray ash, he turned and rode back over to where the blacksmith shop lay—or what remained of it. He glanced down and stopped the horse. His heart thudded again, harder this time. He swung down from the saddle, dropped to a knee off Pete’s left stirrup.

  Beneath the gray ash lay a dark-brown stain.

  Shep’s blood.

  “Ah, hell,” he cried, and lay his hand on the blood. He closed his hand, pulling up a wad of dirt mixed with the dried blood of his murdered brother, and squeezed.

  Tears welled in his eyes.

  “Ah, hell!” he cried again, louder, tears dribbling down his cheeks.

  Squeezing the blood and dirt in his hands, he lowered his head and sobbed.

  Nasty Pete whinnied, sidestepping away from Hunter.

  Bobby Lee yipped and snarled.

  The horse’s whinny and the coyote’s snarls were followed by the thud of a bullet into the ground to Hunter’s right. The thud was followed a heartbeat later by the crack of a rifle.

  Bobby Lee jerked with a start, then hunkered low, mewling.

  Hunter dropped the blood and dirt and leaped to his feet, looking around. Horseback riders were galloping toward him from three sides—from his left and his right and from straight north of the ranch, beyond the remains of the blacksmith shop.

  “Damn!” Hunter leaped for his rifle butt protruding from the sheath over Nasty Pete’s right withers. “Run, Bobby! Hightail it!”

  As Bobby Lee ran off with his bushy tail pulled down, Nasty Pete whinnied again as another bullet plunked into the ground near his prancing hooves, and sidled farther away, so that Hunter’s fingers merely brushed the walnut stock.

  “Damnit!” he yelled, falling to his knees.

  As more bullets cut the air around him, rifles crackling in the distance but growing louder as the riders approached, Hunter lunged up and forward once more, throwing his right hand out for the rifle and wincing against the aches and pains in his battered body. He closed his hand around the stock and ripped the rifle free of the sheath just as Pete wheeled and bolted away from the oncoming riders.

  As bullets screeched and whistled through the air around his head and thudded into the ground around him, Hunter dropped belly flat and pumped a cartridge into the Henry’s action. He picked out one of the four men galloping toward him from the north, for that group was closing on him slightly faster than the ones to his left and his right, and fired.

  His shot flew wide but it made its target flinch in his saddle, slowing his horse.

  Hunter’s next shot hit home, punching dust from the leather chap over the rider’s left leg, making his horse scream and swerve sharply left and into the horse of the rider beside him. Both horses screamed as they disappeared in a cloud of billowing dust, throwing their bellowing riders wide, rifles flying.

  As a bullet carved a furrow over Hunter’s left shoulder and another nicked his left calf, Hunter hurled two quick rounds toward the riders galloping toward him from his right. Swinging left, he fired three rounds toward the riders hammering toward him from that direction. His own bullets did not stop his attackers, but it slowed them some and spread them out.

  In fact, a couple did stop, he saw now through his own wafting powder smoke. One man on his left curveted his mount, halting it, and rested his rifle barrel on his other raised forearm, aiming down the barrel, which promptly blossomed smoke and fire. That bullet carved a nasty burn from left to right across the middle of Hunter’s back.

  He sucked a sharp breath through gritted teeth, then heaved himself to his feet, looking around for cover.

  All he saw around him were the hulking black ruins of the ranch buildings. He glanced south, toward the hill on which his brothers were buried. It was the nearest high ground.

  Wheeling, he ran toward it, lunging forward, throwing his head back, scissoring his arms and legs. Hearing hooves thudding loudly behind him, he glanced over his shoulder. One rider was closing on him faster than the others.

  Hunter swung around too quickly. He got his feet tangled. But that was all right. Falling, he’d avoided the bullet the closing rider had just flung at him and which would have drilled him a third eye if he’d still been standing.

  Hunter slapped the Henry to his shoulder, quickly racking a fresh round in the action, and fired. The man’s horse quickly became riderless, swerving sharply right in time to avoid trampling Hunter. The fallen rider rolled up over Hunter’s left boot, groaning.

  Hunter lowered the Henry’s barrel to the man’s forehead.

  The man, hatless, saw the rifle barrel. He widened his eyes and his mouth. “Nooo!”

  The Henry said yes.

  Hunter emptied the saddle of the next horse barreling toward him. That man hadn’t hit the ground before Hunter leaped again to his feet and resumed his run up the hill toward the minimal cover of the trees and rocks on the hill looming before him.

  He’d taken only five more strides before a bullet slammed into his left leg.

  He hit the ground and rolled, hearing the whoops and yells and thundering hooves of the man-wolves closing on him for the kill.

  * * *

  Standing outside the cave, Annabelle sipped he
r coffee and stared out over the forested slope in the direction of the 4-Box-B. A vague apprehension vexed her. She tipped her ear to the breeze. There were only the bird and squirrel sounds of the forest, the occasional soft plops of pinecones tumbling from branches.

  Just nerves.

  She threw back the last of her coffee, set down the cup, then walked into the cave’s cool darkness. She dropped to a knee beside Angus, who’d fallen back into a deep sleep. Again, he looked deathly pale. His breath rattled in his throat, issuing out of his open mouth. The poor man sounded as though he were drowning.

  Which she supposed he was in a way. Drowning in sorrow.

  Anna had the depressing feeling that Hunter was right. Angus might have survived the bullet wound only to be finished off by the knowledge of what the men from town—the murdering devils from town—had done to the ranch.

  Annabelle plucked the cloth from the basin on the ground beside Angus, wrung it out, and lay it across the old man’s forehead. She gave his spindly shoulder a reassuring, affectionate squeeze.

  Odd how she’d found herself feeling more tenderness toward this old Rebel than she did toward her own father. On the other hand, not so odd . . .

  She rose and walked back out into the sunlight.

  She stopped suddenly, gasped. Her heart skipped a beat.

  Graham Ludlow stood at the edge of the forest below the cave, holding the reins of his vinegar dun stallion. He held his Winchester rifle on his right shoulder. He canted his regal head to one side and stretched his lips back in a sneering grin.

  Annabelle blinked as though to clear the illusion from her eyes. Only, it wasn’t an illusion. Her father stood right there in the brassy afternoon sunshine, his horse cropping the grass jutting up around his boots!

  Annabelle swung around, reaching for her rifle.

  A shadow moved up on her from behind, sliding past her.

  “Uh-uh,” said a man’s low voice.

  Arms engulfed her, drew her back away from her rifle, and lifted her up off the ground.