“No!” Annabelle cried. “Damn you!”
The man holding her chuckled. As she fought him, he said, “Ouch!” and tossed her violently down and to the left. She hit the ground and rolled, hair flying, dust wafting around her. She almost rolled over the edge of the shelf the cave was on, but she caught herself just in time.
She looked up at Frank Stillwell standing over her, cradling his bandaged left hand against his chest. The bandage was spotted with blood. The sheriff stared at her darkly, flaring his nostrils. His eyes were like two lumps of charcoal beneath the broad brim of his hat.
“Don’t hurt her!” yelled Ludlow.
Annabelle turned toward her father. As she did another horse plodded up out of the forest flanking him. In the saddle was none other than Kenneth Earnshaw. Again, Annabelle blinked, still half believing she was hallucinating, or maybe she’d fallen asleep and was dreaming.
Leaning forward in his saddle, Earnshaw groaned. He slid down the saddle’s left stirrup and gave a yell just before he hit the ground. He pushed up onto his hands and knees and promptly spewed his guts into the tall, blond grass, vomiting.
“The old man in there?” Ludlow called to Stillwell.
The sheriff turned to peer into the cave, shading his eyes with his good hand. He turned back to Ludlow, and grinned. “Yep!”
Ludlow turned and said to someone else. “Finish him.”
Two men were standing on the other side of the cave entrance. One was short and seedy looking, the other tall and black bearded. They’d been concealed by the mountain’s shadow. Both men grinned as they cocked their rifles and stepped into the cave.
“Have fun, fellas,” Stillwell said.
“Noooo!” Anna screamed, lunging to her feet.
As she scrambled toward the cave entrance, Stillwell grabbed her arm with his good hand and pulled her back.
“Noooo!” she screamed again.
The scream was nearly drowned by the near-deafening blast of a shotgun.
The tall, bearded man flew back out of the cave as though he’d been lassoed from behind, screaming. His black duster flapped around him like the wings of a giant bat.
The first blast was still echoing when it was joined by a second explosion.
The shorter, seedy-looking killer flew back out of the cave, boot toes barely raking the ground, and was thrown off the ledge and into the grass near where Ludlow stood with his horse. Near where the taller gent lay convulsing with his hands over the gaping, bloody hole in his middle, dying fast.
Stillwell slid his pistol from its holster.
“No, you don’t!” Annabelle lurched up and dug her teeth into the man’s right forearm.
“Bitch!” Stillwell backhanded her. It was only a glancing blow. Annabelle lunged at him, punching him, clawing at his face. Somehow they got turned around on the ledge, and then suddenly Annabelle felt herself falling over the edge toward the grassy ground beneath.
Stillwell cursed as he, too, fell, his legs entangled with hers.
The yellow-brown ground came up hard, smacking Annabelle about the head and shoulders. She groaned and rolled onto her side, the summer-cured grass crackling around her. Stillwell gave a yelp as he hit beside her and rolled several times down the grade toward Ludlow.
“Jesus Christ!” Ludlow said, dropping his horse’s reins and walking toward Annabelle. “Stop it, Stillwell! I told you—!”
Stillwell came up clutching his bandaged hand to his chest, grimacing. His hat was gone, and his short hair was mussed, grass clinging to it. He turned to where Annabelle lay, butterflies dancing in her eyes.
“You bitch!”
Annabelle spat grass and sand from her lips and pushed up onto her elbows. “Go to hell!” She turned to her father. “You go to hell too!”
“You bitch!” Stillwell repeated, rising, glaring at Annabelle with menace. “You’re the cause of all of this—you realize that?”
Annabelle shook her head and heaved herself to her feet. “You got that wrong, you fool. You started this war in Tigerville. No one would be dead—except that idiot Luke Chaney—if you’d been smart enough and man enough to accept Hunter’s word for what had happened on his way into town! Instead, you tried to humiliate him . . . and then you sicced your men on him. For no good reason. Now they’re dead!”
“Shut up, you bitch!” Stillwell lunged toward her, slapped her hard with his right hand.
Annabelle screamed, spun, and fell.
“Stop!” This from the unlikely source of Kenneth Earnshaw. “Stop that, you brigand. That is my betrothed you’re manhandling, sir!”
Kenneth had gained his feet uncertainly and was now moving slowly toward Stillwell, pointing accusingly with his left hand, closing his right hand around one of his fancy six-shooters.
“Shut up, you four-eyed sissy!” Stillwell snapped out of the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes on Anna. “Stay where you are, or I’ll gut you like a fish!”
“Hold on, Stillwell!” Ludlow said, aiming his rifle at the sheriff.
“Shut up, old man!” Stillwell moved on Annabelle once more. “I’ve about had enough of smart-ass women. Time to teach this sassy little filly a lesson she won’t forget!”
Annabelle gained her feet and sidled defensively around Stillwell, who grinned coldly and drew his Colt.
“Stop!” Earnshaw strode toward Stillwell and drew one of his fancy pistols. “I say stop right now or—”
The Colt in his hand roared and bucked.
CHAPTER 40
“Oh!” Kenneth stared in shock at the smoking gun in his hand, then dropped it like a hot potato.
Stillwell jerked around to face Earnshaw. He took two stumbling steps backward. He looked down in shock at the blood bubbling up out of the hole in his upper left chest.
“Oh crackers!” he said, brushing his bandaged left hand across the wound. He looked at Earnshaw, aghast. “You . . . you killed me . . . you son of a bitch!” He turned to Ludlow and said with strange imploring, “I . . . I’ve been killed by . . . by a damn sissy!”
He dropped to a knee and then fell back on his hip, one leg curled beneath him. He was wincing, breathing hard.
Ludlow cut his shocked gaze between Stillwell and Earnshaw, who promptly dropped to his knees and began vomiting in the grass. Annabelle hurried over to Stillwell. She dropped to a knee and tugged at the front of the man’s wool vest.
“Stillwell,” she said. “Where’s the gold? Where’s Hunter’s gold? What did you do with it?”
The sheriff rolled his glassy eyes up at her. “Huh?”
“The gold! Hunter’s gold!”
Stillwell beetled his brows. “What . . . what the hell . . . you talkin’ about, crazy b-bitch?” He wheezed out a bitter laugh. “You think that . . . that I’d be out here gettin’ . . . killed by some damn nancy boy in a tweed coat if I had . . . gold?”
He choked out that last word. His face slackened. His eyes rolled up in his head. Annabelle let him fall back in the grass, dead. She looked around, frowning, deeply befuddled. “If . . . if he didn’t have it . . . who does?”
“Get on your horse, girl!”
She’d been so distracted that she hadn’t seen her father walk up on her. Ludlow stopped six feet away and aimed his rifle at her from his right hip.
“You’re goin’ home. And you’re gonna marry that Nancy-boy if it’s the very last thing I make you do. Not only that, but you’re gonna have a passel of kids with that tinhorn!”
Still down on one knee by Stillwell’s dead body, Annabelle looked up at her father. She hardened her jaws and an angry flush rose in her cheeks. “I’d rather die!” She cut her eyes over to Earnshaw, who was on both knees and slowly running his coat sleeve across his mouth. “No offense, Kenneth.”
The dandy turned his head to glare at her.
“That can be arranged!” Ludlow walked over to her, grabbed her arm, and shoved her toward her buckskin. “Saddle your horse and get started back to the ranch! I won’t listen
to one more word of—”
“Stand down, you old fool.”
Annabelle turned to see Angus standing on the ledge fronting the cave. The old man had gotten into his longhandles, baggy canvas trousers, boots, and battered gray campaign hat. He held one of his old Confederate pistols in his hand, aimed at Ludlow.
He gritted his teeth as he clicked the hammer back. “You turn that girl loose and head on home before I do what I should do and grease you right here! The only reason I won’t is because whatever you are, you’re still her father. I don’t want her to have to live with watchin’ you die.” Angus gave his head a slow, ominous shake. “That don’t mean I won’t do it if I have to, you old polecat.”
“You go to hell, you Southern devil!” Ludlow lifted his arm and pointed an enraged, accusing finger at Angus. He strode stiffly toward him. “This is none of your affair! Why, you’re nothin’ but a . . .” He let the words trail off as he tensed suddenly and began issuing strangling sounds from his throat.
The rifle fell from his right hand.
He lifted his left hand, which curled toward him, claw-like, as though of its own accord. Standing behind him, Annabelle watched his thick neck turn beet red. His strangling sounds growing louder, Ludlow dropped to a knee.
Annabelle walked around in front of him, stood over him, her eyes stony. “Your heart?”
Clutching his stiff left arm with his right hand, Ludlow nodded. He cursed and groaned, wincing. Finally, he dropped forward onto his hands and knees, panting.
Annabelle turned to Kenneth Earnshaw, who stood facing her and Ludlow now, his face pasty, eyes glassy from drink and shock. “Get him on his horse and take him home,” she said coldly.
Earnshaw stared at her, his lower jaw hanging. He turned to look at the dead Stillwell, then strode uncertainly forward. He knelt beside Ludlow, placed a hand on his arm, and said, “Do you think you can ride, Mr. Ludlow?”
He looked up at Annabelle uncertainly.
“He can ride,” Annabelle said, grabbing her father’s other arm, pulling the stout old man to his feet. “He doesn’t have a choice in the matter.”
She and Earnshaw led Ludlow over to the vinegar dun. It took some doing, but they finally got him mounted. He didn’t say anything. He just sat leaning forward in his saddle, over the horse’s pole, holding his left arm with his right hand. He stared glassily down at the dun’s mane.
Annabelle stepped back, turned to Earnshaw, and tossed the dun’s reins to him. “Light a shuck, Kenneth.”
The young dandy climbed awkwardly into his saddle. He turned to Annabelle, hardened his jaws.
“This won’t stand,” he said primly. “I tell you, this won’t stand. You think you won’t marry me?” He laughed with menace, nearly dislodging his glasses from his nose. “We’ll see about that!”
He booted his steel-dust ahead and nearly fell out of the saddle as the horse lunged off its rear hooves. He dropped the dun’s reins as he desperately grabbed his own saddle horn, barely holding on. That was all right. The dun trailed him, anyway, eager to get back home to fresh hay and water.
Annabelle’s father turned to glare back at her over his shoulder. His eyes were none-too-vaguely threatening. They seemed to say, “This isn’t over.”
When they were gone, Anna walked toward where Angus still stood on the ledge fronting the cave. “Are you all right?”
“Some better.” Angus was staring off over the pine-stippled ridge behind Annabelle.
She stopped, frowned up at him. “What is it?”
“They wouldn’t have come up here with so few men,” Angus said darkly. “Not if they were out to run my son to ground. They would have sent another small army.”
Suddenly, Annabelle knew it was true. Her heart thudded. She turned to stare down the slope through the trees, in the direction of the 4-Box-B. “Oh God!”
* * *
Hunter picked out a man scurrying up the slope before him and fired.
The man gave a shrill yell as he dove behind a cedar. A bullet smashed into the top of Shep’s grave to Hunter’s right, and the big ex-Confederate pulled his head down in the valley between his brothers’ graves, scattered rocks and the grave mounds themselves offering his only cover from the killers climbing the slope around him.
Two more bullets hammered the rocks around him. Hunter lifted his head and rifle, picked out a target, and fired. His assailant flew backward, dropping his rifle and clutching his shoulder, screaming as he fell.
Hunter picked out another target—he thought he’d killed maybe five of them so far, wounded two or three more. But it looked like at least five were still trying to make their way up the hill around him, dodging behind rocks and trees.
Hunter squeezed the Henry’s trigger.
The hammer clicked, empty. He’d fired all sixteen rounds.
“Oh Lordie!”
He set the rifle aside and drew the big LeMat as more bullets screeched through the air around him and tore up gravel and rock from the mounded graves. Straight ahead of him, two men were sprinting up the slope, deadheading toward him. In the corners of his eyes, he spied several more. He fired at one, missed, and drew his head down in time to avoid a bullet that would have cored through his left ear.
They were moving on him too fast now. He only had five more bullets in the LeMat, and the shotgun shell. His seconds were numbered.
He could hear Bobby Lee howling mournfully in the woods nearby. Even the coyote was aware his master’s ticket was about to be punched.
Hunter thought he might as well take down as many of these hardcases as he could before he died up here, appropriately enough, to lie with his dead brothers . . .
Hunter heaved himself to his feet, loosing a loud, hair-raising Rebel yell. Crouching he looked around and extended the LeMat.
His own yell was answered by another, louder one:
“Yeeee-HAWWWWWWWW!”
It was accompanied by the thuds of galloping hooves.
Hunter whipped around, raising the LeMat, preparing to fire. He lowered the big popper when he saw the darkly wizened, white-bearded face and gray campaign hat of the man barreling toward him on an unfamiliar horse, grinning as Angus held a double-barreled shotgun in his lone hand, which also held the reins of his hard-charging claybank.
“Pa!” Hunter bellowed as the rider galloped past him, raising the shotgun and discharging one barrel with an echoing, cannon-like blast.
One attacker screamed as he was punched backward down the hill.
Angus discharged the second barrel, evoking another cry.
As he stopped his horse and drew one of the twin Confederate pistols shoved down behind the waistband of his denim jeans, Hunter went to work with the LeMat, emptying the cylinder into the men around him who’d been taken off guard by the hard-charging old Rebel.
When he’d popped his last .44 cap, he flicked the LeMat’s steel lever, engaging the twelve-gauge shotgun shell. He swung the pistol to his right just as an attacker in a weathered Stetson and flapping chaps ran toward him, cocking his Winchester and howling like a gut-shot lobo.
The LeMat leaped and roared, turning the man’s face the color of a ripe tomato, throwing him backward down the hill.
Hunter turned toward where Angus was riding along the shoulder of the slope, emptying his twin Griswold & Gunnisons, one after another in his lone hand, into the wounded, howling killers, sending each one to his own reward.
Hooves thudded in the same direction from which Angus had so unexpectedly come.
“Hunter!”
He turned again to see Annabelle galloping toward him on her buckskin. She leaped down just as Hunter felt his left knee buckle and drop to the ground. He winced, clutching the bloody wound in the back of his left leg.
Annabelle dropped to a knee beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “How bad are you hit?”
“Where in the hell did you two come from?” Hunter said, staring at her in disbelief before cutting his eyes at old Angus then back
to Anna again.
“We had visitors,” she said.
“Stillwell? Your old man?”
Annabelle nodded. “Stillwell’s dead. My father is heading home with his tail between his legs.” Her eyes swept Hunter’s big frame, noting the many bullet burns oozing blood. “Oh God!” she intoned. “How bad . . . ?”
“Not bad,” Hunter said. “The leg here is the worst, but, hell, I’ve cut myself worse shaving.”
“Oh, shut up and let me look at it!”
“How bad you hit, son?”
Hunter looked up to see his father stop the unfamiliar horse, which now Hunter thought he recognized as Stillwell’s gelding, before him. The old man looked somehow both haggard and hale. “Pa . . .”
Angus swung heavily down, wincing against the pain of the wound in his side. He dropped to a knee beside Anna, spat to one side, and shook his head. “I may have been down,” he said. “But don’t count this old rascal out. Not yet.”
Hunter smiled, wincingly, as Anna wrapped a bandanna around the wound in his leg.
“How bad’s it look?” Angus asked Anna.
“He’ll live,” Anna said, nodding, her gaze cast with grave relief. She kissed Hunter’s cheek. “He’d better. There’s this Yankee girl he’s gotta marry.”
“Oh yeah?” Hunter said. “I hope she’s not bossy.”
“Well, she is.” Anna crossed her eyes at him. “Very bossy!”
“And you got yourselves a ranch to rebuild.” Angus gave Hunter a direct look, then turned to peer down the hill at the burned-out ranch buildings.
Hunter smiled, nodded. “Our blood was spilled here, Pa. It’s hallowed ground.”
He glanced at the graves humping up beside them, mounded with rocks. Some of the rocks had been scattered by flying lead. Angus looked at the graves, too, and a sheen of tears grew in his eyes.
“We have to rebuild. We have to stay.” Hunter turned to Anna. “No one’s gonna drive a Buchanon off his own land. Just won’t happen.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way!” Anna threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the passion in her wild heart.
A yammering sounded to Hunter’s left. He and Annabelle and Angus turned to see Bobby Lee hiking his leg on the head of Ludlow’s dead foreman, C. J. Bonner.
The Black Hills Page 32