The Green River’s steel blade glinted in the afternoon sunshine.
“Come on, Buchanon,” Chaney said, lunging toward Hunter. “They say you Reb devils got some fight in you—even if you don’t wear a gun!”
He slashed the Green River knife from right to left and would have laid open Hunter’s belly if Hunter hadn’t leaped back. The Green River’s razor-edged blade had come within an inch or even less of doing just that. The knowledge caused a burn of rage to rise up from the base of the ex-Confederate’s back, spreading across his shoulders and blazing in his clean-shaven cheeks.
Hunter faced his opponent, crouching, arms spread, ready to parry Chaney’s next assault. “What the hell’s this about, Chaney? What’s your beef with me?”
Chaney curled his mouth in a sneering grin, then lunged, slashing with the knife. Overconfidence was the man’s Achilles’ heel. He’d just retreated from another attempt at eviscerating Hunter when Hunter sprang forward, kicking upward with his left boot, the toe of which smashed against the underside of Chaney’s right hand.
There was the dull snap of breaking bone.
Taken by surprise, Chaney gave a hard, indignant grunt. The knife flew out of his hand, arcing sharply up, flashing in the sunlight before landing not far from where Bobby Lee now sat on the boulder, watching the fight with a devilish glint in his long, yellow eyes, a low whine of apprehension issuing from deep in his chest.
Chaney grabbed his wrist and bellowed, “Damn you, Reb devil—you broke my wrist!”
He stood there, knees buckling, crouched over his injured hand, as Hunter walked wide around him and scooped the knife up out of the tawny grass. He brushed off the knife and started to turn, saying, “Now suppose you tell me what—”
He stopped when he saw Chaney coming toward him like a bull out of a chute, head down, eyes glinting malevolently, a sinister smile tugging at his mouth corners. Hunter stepped to one side. Chaney plowed into Hunter’s right chest and shoulder, gave a yelp, and stumbled away.
Bobby Lee lifted his head and sent a warbling cry careening skyward.
Dazed by Chaney’s assault, Hunter swung around toward where Chaney stood six feet away, his back to Hunter. The deputy sheriff was leaning forward as though he were looking for something on the ground. Hunter looked at his own right hand.
He was no longer holding the knife. His hand was slick and bright with fresh blood.
Chaney turned to face Hunter. The Green River was sticking out of Chaney’s belly, the handle angled down. Doubtless, the knifepoint was embedded in the deputy’s heart. Reacting instinctively when Chaney had bulled toward him, the old warrior instincts coming alive in him, Hunter had dropped the knife handle slightly, angling the blade up toward his assailant’s heart.
He’d killed countless Union soldiers that way. Only, he’d done so consciously. He’d killed Luke Chaney without thinking.
Hunter’s heart thudded as Chaney stared at him in wide-eyed horror.
The deputy had both his big, bloody hands wrapped around the knife handle protruding from his belly. He took one stumbling step backward, wincing slightly as he tried to pull out the knife. He opened his mouth as though to speak, but no words made it past his lips.
Chaney’s eyes rolled up in their sockets. His chin lifted and he tumbled straight back to the ground with a heavy thud and a breathy chuff as the air was punched from his lungs. He lay still.
Yipping softly, Bobby Lee dropped down off of the boulder, ran over to Chaney, and hiked a back leg, sending a yellow stream dribbling onto the dead deputy’s forehead.
Hunter stared in shock at the dead man.
He raised his bloody hands, stared at them. A million images of bloody death flashed through his mind all at once. The screams and wails of the wounded and dying, the concussion of hammering Napoleon cannons and howitzers, the crackle of musket fire.
Hunter felt as though he’d been kicked in the head. His legs buckled. He dropped to his knees. Sagging back onto his butt, he stared at his blood-washed hands.
He was still sitting there maybe ten, fifteen minutes later, staring at his hands. Bobby Lee lay beside him, calmly chewing burrs out of his mottled gray-brown coat. Suddenly, the coyote lifted his head and sniffed, twitching his ears. Then Hunter heard them too—hoof thuds rising in the distance.
Bobby Lee mewled softly, staring off toward Hunter’s right.
Hunter felt inert, unable to react though warning bells tolled in his head.
The hoof thuds continued to grow louder until the rider appeared, swinging through a crease between the buttes. She turned her head toward Hunter and Bobby Lee, and drew back on the reins of her fine buckskin stallion. Sunlight glinted off the long, dark-red curls cascading like amber honey down from her man’s felt hat to spill across her shoulders.
Annabelle Ludlow batted her heels against the buckskin’s flanks, and the gelding galloped forward until the girl drew back on the reins again and sat for a moment, staring down in horror at Luke Chaney lying dead in the tawny grass. She was nineteen years old—a rare beauty with emerald eyes in a fine, smooth, heart-shaped face lightly tanned by the sun. She wore a calico blouse and tight, badly faded and frayed denim jeans, the cuffs of which were pulled down over her men’s small-size western riding boots, which she wore without spurs.
The boots were as worn and scuffed as any cowpuncher’s.
A green-eyed, rustic beauty was Annabelle Ludlow, with long slender legs and womanly curves. A rich girl to boot, being the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the Hills. By looking at her you’d think she was the daughter of a small shotgun rancher whose wife sold eggs to help make ends meet. Annabelle didn’t believe in flaunting her riches, and that was only one of the many things Hunter Buchanon loved about her.
“I was airing Ivan out nearby,” she said after nearly a minute had passed. She’d named her horse Ivanhoe, after the hero of a book she loved. “I heard the shots. What happened?”
It was as if she’d whispered the query from a long ways away. Hunter had barely heard her.
As he sat there on his butt in the grass, in his mind he was a thousand miles east and more than ten years back in time, and he was pulling his bowie knife out of the wool-clad belly of a young Union picket. It was late—one or two in the morning—and he’d been sent to blow up several supply wagons along the Tennessee River, using the Union’s own Ketchum grenades. Those wagons were heavily guarded, and the young man he’d just killed had been one of those guards.
There’d been a clear half-moon, and the milky light of the moon shone in the young soldier’s eyes as Hunter, his hand closed over the private’s mouth to muffle any scream, jerked him over backward from behind. He pulled the bloody knife out of the young man’s belly and found himself staring into a pair of impossibly young, anguished, and terrified eyes gazing back at him in silent pleading.
The soldier was tall and willowy. He had the body of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old. But the face, speckled with red pimples, and the wide-open eyes were that of a boy a good bit younger. Hunter dragged him almost silently back into the woods along the river, the water lapping behind him. The soldier’s body seemed impossibly light. He did not struggle with his killer.
He was bleeding out and dying fast.
Hunter lay him down on the spongy ground and slid his hand away from the young man’s mouth.
“Oh God,” the boy had wheezed, drawing air into his lungs. “Oh God . . . I’m . . . I’m dyin’—ain’t I?” It seemed a genuine question that the boy answered himself. “I’m dyin’!”
Hunter stared down at him. He’d killed so many almost without thinking about it. That’s what you had to do as a soldier. You had to numb yourself against killing. You killed for the greater good. You killed for the freedom of the Confederacy, to stamp out the uppity Yankee aggressors. But as much as he wanted to ignore the innocent eyes staring up at him this moonlit night along the Tennessee, he found his mind recoiling in horror and revulsion at the fear he’
d inflicted, the life he’d just taken.
The boy had whispered so softly that Hunter could barely hear him.
“Ma an’ Pa . . . never gonna . . . see ’em again. My lovely May!” The boy’s eyes filled with tears. “We was gonna be married as soon as I went home!”
Hunter felt as though it were his own heart that had been pierced with the knife he kept honed to a razor’s edge. He looked at the blood glistening low on the young soldier’s blue-clad belly, wishing that he could take back what he’d just done, return this horrified soldier’s life to him. Return Ma and Pa to him, and the girl, May, whom he loved and intended to marry.
Horror and sorrow exploded inside of Hunter. He dropped the bloody knife, grabbed the young man by his collar, and drew his head up to his own. “I’m sorry!” he sobbed. “I’m sorry!”
The young man stared back at him, twin half-moons floating in his eyes as though on the surface of a night-dark lake. The soldier opened his mouth as though to speak, but he couldn’t get any words out.
Pain twisted his face. His lower jaw fell slack. His eyes rolled back until all Hunter could see were their whites.
The soldier’s raspy breaths fell silent, and his chest grew still. Hunter released him and he fell, lifeless as a sack of grain, to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” the Confederate heard himself mutter.
But then it wasn’t the young Union soldier lying before him in the light of the Tennessee moon. It was Luke Chaney lying sprawled in the tawny grass of the Black Hills, blood glistening brightly in the light of the afternoon sun.
Annabelle knelt beside Hunter, her hand on his thigh, gazing into his eyes with concern. “Hunter? Hunter, can you hear me? Hunter!”
CHAPTER 3
Hunter slid his gaze slowly toward his girl. He’d been only vaguely aware of Annabelle’s presence, but now as that moonlit night of so long ago mercifully dwindled into the past, he was aware of her worried green gaze on him.
He placed his hand over hers, atop his right thigh. He found modest comfort in the warmth of her flesh. “I’m all right.”
“Where were you?”
Hunter shook his head and winced against the throbbing in his temples. He leaned forward, pressed his fists against his head as though to knead away the pain that normally came at night, on the heels of his frequent nightmares.
“You were back with that boy you killed,” Annabelle said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “With the young Union soldier.”
Hunter pressed his hands to his temples once more, then lifted his head and cast his gaze toward where Chaney lay in the grass. Bobby Lee lay ten feet from the body, in a scrap of shade offered by a cedar branch. He was staring at Hunter and mewling deep in his throat with concern.
“What happened?” Annabelle asked again.
“I was on my way to town with Angus’s beer. Sidewinder ambushed me.” Hunter turned to her, grabbed her arms, and squeezed. “I swear, Annabelle. I didn’t mean to kill him. I kicked the knife out of his hand. I walked over to pick it up. As I turned, he ran into me. I must’ve—”
“Shhh, shhh.” Annabelle wrapped her arms around him, hugging him. “It’s all right. He gave you no choice. I heard the shooting from the next ridge north. He was out for blood, obviously.”
Annabelle pulled away from Hunter and gazed guiltily into his eyes. “This is my fault.”
He frowned. “What’re you talking about?”
“I caught him following me again the other day. I was driving a wagonload of supplies up to the men manning my father’s line cabin on Beaver Ridge. When I topped a hill I saw Luke following me from about a quarter-mile back. I pulled the wagon off the trail and waited. When he rode up, I threatened him with my Winchester.
“I swear, Hunter, I was so mad to find that vermin dogging my heels again, after I had refused his marriage proposal in no uncertain terms, that I almost shot him right then and there! I told him once and for all to leave me alone, or I’d shoot him. And . . .” She dropped her eyes demurely. “And I made the mistake of telling him that when I married, you’d be the one . . .”
Hunter smiled and placed a hand on her cheek. “Well . . . I kinda like the sound of that myself.”
“I do too.” Annabelle kissed his hand. “But I’m afraid that might be the reason he ambushed you here today. Why you had to kill him.”
“Well, whatever the reason,” Hunter said, turning to Chaney once more, “he’s dead.”
“I’ll ride over to the mine and tell my father. He’ll know what to do.”
Luke Chaney’s father, Max Chaney, was a business partner of Annabelle’s father, Graham Ludlow. Chaney had wanted his thuggish son to marry Annabelle, and had tried to arrange it with Graham Ludlow. Ludlow wouldn’t hear of it. It might have stressed his and Chaney’s business partnership, but Ludlow had set his sights on higher fruit than the ungainly, foul-mouthed, and whore-mongering Luke Chaney.
The man Ludlow wanted for his future son-in-law was the somewhat prissy but well-bred and well-heeled son of an eastern railroad magnate currently working to build a railroad that would connect the Black Hills with Sydney, Nebraska. The young man’s name was Kenneth Earnshaw, and he’d graduated the previous fall from none other than Harvard University.
“No,” Hunter said, grabbing Annabelle’s arm before she could walk back to her horse. “No, I’ll take care of it. Chaney’s Stillwell’s deputy. I’m going to take him on into Tigerville and tell Stillwell what happened.”
“That’s crazy, Hunter!”
“Telling what happened out here ain’t crazy. It’s the only thing to do.”
“Stillwell will sic his other cutthroat deputies on you! He’ll kill you!”
Some called Frank Stillwell a lawman-for-hire. In other words, he was a gun-for-hire who sometimes wore a badge. A couple of years ago, Tigerville and the hills around it had been a hotbed of bloody violence. This was right after General George Armstrong Custer had opened the Hills to gold-seekers in 1874, despite the Hills still belonging to the Sioux Indians, as per the Laramie Treaty of 1868.
Men and mules and horses and placer mining equipment poured up the Missouri River from Kansas and Missouri by riverboat and mule- and ox-train, and the great Black Hills Gold Rush exploded.
Naturally, crime also exploded, in the forms of claim-jumping and bloody murder as well as the stealing of gold being hauled by ore wagons, called “Treasure Coaches,” southwest to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the nearest railroad. Tigerville was on the Cheyenne-Custer-Deadwood Stage Line, and the coaches negotiating that formidable country were often preyed upon by road agents.
For those bloody reasons, the commissioners of Pennington County, chief among them Annabelle’s father, Graham Ludlow, brought in Stillwell and the small gang of hardtails who rode with him, also calling themselves “lawmen.” Max Chaney got Luke a job as another of Stillwell’s deputies, and the big, gun-savvy, boorish Luke fit right in. Bona fide crime dwindled while the death rate went up. It was still said in these parts that you couldn’t ride any of the roads spoking out of Tigerville and into the surrounding hills without coming upon Stillwell’s low-hanging “tree fruit” in the form of hanged men.
Men hanged without benefit of trial.
Many of those men had once fought for the Confederacy. It seemed that most of the “tree fruit” Stillwell “grew” hailed from the South, which wasn’t one bit fishy at all, given Stillwell’s history of being second-in-command of one of the worst Union prisoner-of-war camps during the Civil War and having a widely known and much-talked-about hatred for the warriors of the old South.
“He won’t kill me, Anna,” Hunter said, sounding more confident than he felt. “Not even Stillwell or his tough nuts will kill an unarmed man. Not in town in broad daylight, anyways.” He glanced at Chaney again, and flared an angry nostril.
“At least fetch your pa and your brothers. You need someone to back you in town, Hunter.”
He shook his head stubbornly. “Pa an’
Shep an’ Tye would only come armed. It’d look like we were spoiling for a fight. Knowin’ Pa an’ Shep like I do—they’d likely start one. A fight is what I’m trying to avoid.”
Anna glowered up at him, said softly, “Just bury him out here.” She glanced at the dead man. “Toss him into a ravine and kick some dirt on him. It’s better than what he deserves.”
Hunter placed two fingers on her chin and gently turned her head toward his. Her green eyes glistened in the sunlight. “You know that’s not how I do things, Anna.”
“Oh, I know it’s not. And that’s why I love you. But I don’t want you to die, Hunter. I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you, you big Southern scalawag!” She rose up onto the toes of her boots, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him passionately. Hunter returned the kiss, basking in the comfort of the girl in his arms.
Finally, he eased her away from him.
“Can I borrow Ivan to fetch my wagon?”
“You know you can.”
“Obliged.” Hunter walked over and grabbed the buckskin’s reins. He swung up into the saddle and galloped off in the direction from which Anna had come.
He found the wagon not far up the trail. The mule, Titus, was too lazy to have run far. Angus’s beer kegs were still secure in the box, stacked against the front panel and tied down with heavy ropes.
Hunter stepped off the buckskin’s back and into the wagon. He tied Ivan to the tailgate and climbed over the beer kegs into the driver’s box. A few minutes later he swung back into the buttes south of the trail and saw Annabelle sitting on the ground not far from Chaney’s slack figure.
Bobby Lee lay close beside her, his head on her thigh. She stroked the coyote affectionately. The coyote gave his tail intermittent, satisfied thumps against the ground and blinked his long yellow eyes slowly, luxuriously.
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