Watching and evaluating their movements, Cormac easily selected the best of the four abandoned horses: the large and well-muscled grulla mare with which he had already made friends. He had not previously noticed her powerful hindquarters and smooth lines indicating speed and endurance, or her high-arched neck and high-held tail.
Cormac grimaced and shook his head when he examined the spur damage on their flanks. What kind of human being could treat animals like that? That was a question the answer to which he already knew all too well. He had to return to the farm for weapons and food for traveling; once there he would treat the wounds of the horses as well as his own. The sick feeling in his stomach was beginning to remind him that he had not eaten in a day and a half.
Cormac Lynch removed the bridles and unsaddled the horses, giving them time to roll in the grass while he chose the most padded saddle blanket and a saddle that appeared to be large enough to fit the grulla. Though still in poor condition, the day’s rest and grazing had done all the horses good. He mounted and started the mare toward the farm; his now, he realized dully. He was not looking forward to arriving there without his family. Accustomed to traveling together, the other horses followed.
A few miles to the southeast, Lainey Nayle topped a hill, riding the horse of her adopted father. He had been sick for three days and was lying in the back of their covered wagon, now being driven by her mother, a couple of miles behind, while Lainey scouted ahead for the best route for the wagon. Her father had indicated the direction he wanted them to travel. They were looking for a piece of good farmland, well off by itself for safety.
He had warned her not to skyline herself when going over hilltops to reduce the risk of being seen, but she wasn’t worried. Her father was very protective of her; this was simply overprotection. She was perfectly capable of making intelligent decisions on her own. After all, she was fourteen years old and looking and thinking more like a woman every day. This was beautiful, rolling green countryside with no other people around for miles.
What was the need to be so worried all the time? At the bottom of the hill was a deeply cut arroyo made years before by a fast-moving stream searching for a route to the ocean. When the source of the water had been cut off, it had simply dried up, leaving an ugly gouge in an otherwise pristine landscape. From the hilltop, Lainey could see an easy wagon passage about a quarter mile to the north, but there was no need for her to ride that far; she could cross right where she was.
She guided the horse carefully down into the arroyo, around a fallen tree, and up the other side. As she crested the top, she found herself in the center of a half circle formed by four men on horses, one of the men the largest and ugliest man she had ever seen. He took her breath away.
“Well, well, well,” he snarled. “Look what we found. Don’t be afraid, little missy. We are going to take right good care of you. There’s no sense in you being out here all by yourself, you can travel with us. A female around the camp for a while would be a nice change. I’m tired of eating our own cookin’, and we can teach you a few things you’ll need to know to become a woman.”
To one of the others, who had ridden up close to her side unnoticed while she had been staring speechlessly at the big man, he said, “Take her reins for her, Raunchy. I’d feel terrible if her horse should get scared and run away. This nice-looking young lady might get hurt. We’ll just take her along with us to the farm. We can rest up there a few days, and it’ll give us all time to get acquainted with her.”
Cormac let the horses drink at the water tank and then rode into the barn; the other horses followed. They knew what a barn was: barns meant food and barns meant rest. The six stalls normally used by the farm’s saddle horses and the two plow horses now grazing in the pasture were empty, and he let the horses select their own.
After cleaning their wounds and putting on a generous coating of healing salve, he gave each a healthy helping of grain mixed with a little corn and climbed into the loft to kick down some hay. The richness of the alfalfa would speed the horses’ recuperation. His pa had planned the loft with a trapdoor over each stall’s feeder to make feeding easy.
Cormac stood for a moment. He always enjoyed being in the barn with its smell of grain and hay, horses and liniments, and of well-oiled tack hanging on the hooks, but not this day.
All alone, now, he thought. No more Becky to laugh with and torment, no mother to kiss him in the morning and teach him book learnin’, no pa to work beside and teach him man stuff . . . just alone. And they weren’t coming back. Never. His insides were filled with despair and a sick feeling of emptiness and hate. Cormac would find the men who did this, and they would die.
He was stalling, he realized. He did not want to go into the house alone. One of the upper barn doors was open and swinging in the breeze, and he walked over to close it. Dakota rainstorms frequently came quickly, and if the hay became wet it would mold. Looking out over the farmyard, he froze in disbelief. In the distance, he could see five riders approaching. He recognized four of the horses that were coming home and their riders; on the fifth horse was a smaller and unfamiliar figure.
It was unbelievable that the outlaws would show up here. He felt no fear, only a cold, terrible hatred like he could have never imagined. He hesitated only a moment. In the darkness of the loft, Cormac felt secure that he had not been seen. He backed away quickly from the door and slid down the ladder. His pa had laid out the barn in such a way as to make it possible to move from it to the house without being seen by someone approaching from the front. “You never know when it might come in handy,” he had told Cormac one day.
Running into the house, he took down the shotgun and loaded both barrels with #3 shot for a tight pattern and powerful discharge. It was a ten-gauge; his pa had wanted the most powerful shotgun available for longer range, one capable of reaching out for birds flying away. Cormac also checked the loads in the rifle and stuffed a six-gun in his belt and extra shells in his pockets.
Through the crack in the shutters, he could see the riders passing through the front gate. Riding four abreast, one was holding the reins of the fifth rider: a girl his own age. Straight and tall for her age, she was riding alertly on a small horse and looking all around, as if for a plan of escape. Gutsy, Cormac thought.
He had no more than had the thought when she bolted. As they passed through the gate, a slender board with which Cormac had been hitting rocks and laid down on the upper board of the gate a couple days before came within reach. While going through the gate, the outlaw leading her horse was saying something to the others and not paying attention to her when, with one quick motion, she leaned over, grabbed the board, and swung it with both hands. Connecting with his shoulder, she knocked her captor out of his saddle, grabbed up her reins, and spun her horse around into an immediate run. She was out the gate and running flat out before her captors realized what had happened.
“Well, get up and go get her, damnit, Raunchy,” Gator laughed. “Don’t just lay there. You lost her, now go get her.”
Cormac watched as the outlaw clambered back into his saddle while holding his shoulder in pain and launched into a chase of the girl on the little horse while the other outlaws, welcoming the entertainment, laughed and hollered encouragement. Riding his pa’s horse, Lop Ear, it was no contest for the outlaw; he caught up to the girl easily. Her horse was little, but it was quick, and she could ride. Every time the man called Raunchy caught up with her, she spun her horse in a different direction. The other riders laughed and shouted derisive remarks until the man threw his lasso around her horse’s neck and led her back after first slapping her off her horse and then making her remount.
Cormac was tempted to knock him out of the saddle again, only using a rifle bullet instead of a board, but he wanted them all. Guns in hand, Cormac slipped quietly out the back door. Confident there was nobody to stop them; the outlaws were relaxed and conversing with no signs of fear or worry. Their line of travel to the barn would have them pass arou
nd the corner of the house.
When Cormac’s father had been teaching him how to fight, he had taught him to fight fair, give the other person a fair chance, don’t kick him when he’s down. In this case, Cormac felt neither the need nor desire to fight fair. Outnumbered and outsized, the thought of mercy never entered his mind. They were going to die . . . today . . . now.
Carefully leaning the guns within reach against the wall, Cormac placed the lid on the rain barrel in which his mother and Becky had caught rainwater to wash and make their hair soft, and climbed up to stand on it. Already tall for his age, by standing on the barrel, he would be at an elevation equal to the riders. He picked up the double-barreled shotgun and cocked both barrels, pulled it to his shoulder, and waited, surprised at his own calmness.
The outlaws would be following a curve as they came around the corner of the house. His pa had taught Cormac to hunt doves by flushing them, whenever possible, toward a group of trees. As the doves flew away, they would have to turn to avoid the trees, and in so doing, two or three would come into alignment and could be felled with one shot. His pa had not been one to waste ammunition.
The horses’ heads would come into Cormac’s view no more than fifteen feet away. Standing on the rain barrel put the barrels of the shotgun in near-perfect alignment with where the outlaw’s heads would appear as they came around the corner. If he held high, the buckshot spread would not hit the horses. The girl was far enough behind to be out of danger.
Around the corner they came, and Cormac waited. Their attention focused on the barn door, looking neither right nor left, they were coming neatly into line just as his pa had said. Looking down the valley between the barrels, Cormac set the sights between the centermost riders. The buckshot pattern would spread in both directions to encompass all four. He could almost hear his pa’s voice: “Wait . . . wait. . . . Hold it . . . wait.”
The doves were making the turn and coming into formation. “Just a little longer . . . wait . . . let them get into the pocket . . . wait.” The far doves came around into perfect alignment, heads all in one neat row. As their distance to the house increased, each was just a little in front of the one next to him, as if having a photograph taken, each wanting to make sure his face could be seen perfectly.
Cormac wanted them to know who and why. “Hey!” he said quietly. Their faces turned in unison, seeing him, and, in the same instant, the red rose of fire mushrooming from both barrels of the shotgun as Cormac pulled both triggers simultaneously. The gun roared, the horses bolted, and the girl—her fear and emotion so tightly held bursting loose—screamed hysterically. Cormac Lynch grabbed the corner of the house to keep from being knocked off the rain barrel as the heads of four vile human beings bounced mangled and bloody into the dirt. Vengeance was far swifter than befitted the likes of them, was far better than they deserved.
CHAPTER 3
Cormac Lynch pulled rein on the hill when they spotted her wagon. She suggested he come along and introduce himself, but she didn’t really mean it, and he didn’t believe that him being Cormac Lynch was going to particularly impress anybody. She obviously didn’t like him anyway. Finding the wagon as it bounced its way slowly across the prairie had been no problem. Getting her calmed down had been a different story.
No matter that she had not been showing it, anyone in her situation would have been frightened, and the sudden and unexpected blast of the shotgun and spurts of blood had pushed her over the edge. As her horse bolted, she half-fell and half-scrambled off and ran away, screaming and shaking and falling and crawling and trying to stay away from the terrible person who had just blown the heads off four people.
When he caught her, she began swinging her arms and fists like a wild woman, still screaming at the top of her lungs. A few times, she connected—it hurt. She was taller than Becky had been and stronger than she looked. Once her hysteria had worn itself out, she regained her self-control and was no longer afraid.
She allowed herself to be led into the house, her eyes all the while burning holes through him and looking at him with hatred, anger, and disgust like he was some sort of monster. He had just blown the heads off four people. Eventually she told him who she was and what had happened to her.
Suddenly Cormac’s stomach started sounding like a bear fresh out of hibernation, and he realized it was his second day without food. He was hungry enough to eat saddle leather if he could soak it in a little gravy for a while first. He had promised that if she let him fix her something to eat, he would see her back to her wagon.
They ate in near silence. He tried to talk her up a couple times, telling her how brave he thought she had been. Without going into detail, he explained that his family had been killed and what had just taken place was a result of that, but it made no never mind; she was having none of it. Staring at him with bitterness, she ate little. He had just saved her from horrors she could not possibly imagine, yet Cormac Lynch was a bad guy. Fine.
Theirs was a Conestoga wagon. His pa had explained to him that most folks simply used a farmer’s wagon with a tarp over it to protect the goods and passengers. A Conestoga wagon was more costly but could carry a heavier load, and although it leaked a little, would float long enough to get across most streams and rivers. Usually pulled by a team of four or six oxen, with its white top flopping gently in the breeze, it was a sight. His pa had said some folks called the wagons land sailors because they resembled a ship with sails; he sure couldn’t see it.
“Good luck,” Cormac told her, shifting in the saddle and gesturing toward her approaching wagon; he watched her leave. He had learned in a short period of time, as she was going to learn, that life does not always come in a sweet and pretty package all tied up with a nice ribbon. He had also learned that womenfolk looked at things differently than menfolk. He had no desire to listen to her folks being told what had happened, what a terrible person he was, and being stared at like he was Lucifer himself.
“Boy! You blow the heads off four people and right away you’re a bad guy,” he said to himself. Apparently, the recent events had hardened him. He could almost hear his pa. “Very funny,” he would have said, just before cuffing Cormac on the back of the head. “You just killed four people, and you’re trying to be funny.”
Cormac didn’t agree. They weren’t people; they were animals and deserved to be treated as such. No, that wasn’t true. Animals deserved better treatment. Watching until she reached her wagon, he started home; he had more graves to dig. He was becoming a regular mortician.
It was near dark when they rolled through Cormac’s front gate. He said it aloud just to see how it sounded. “My front gate.” He didn’t care for it much. He liked “our front gate” much better, but offhand he could think of nobody who particularly cared what Cormac Lynch did, or did not, think. The hole was mostly dug when he first heard their wagon. Recent rains had kept the ground from packing down, but the rich Dakota soil, normally a joy to work, this time was not. It was a downright shame to contaminate it with the rot that he was putting into it. If the one hadn’t been so all-fired big, the grave would have already been done.
Well, Cormac thought, it was to be expected. He had hoped they would just keep on going and leave him be, but apparently that was too much to ask, what with a woman’s natural instinct toward mothering and all. After all, there he was, a poor child recently orphaned, miles from other people, lost, and not knowing what to do next. Poor thing. How could she possibly leave that be? At least that’s how he figured she must have figured. Cormac had no such inclinations his own self.
He had worked through much of his mourning period digging the graves for his mother, pa, and Becky. Cormac’s pa had taught him how to work, and he had always found it to be a good salve for his mind, a good time for thinking. Whilst his hands were busy, his mind could work out whatever was bothering it. This was going to take a lot of working out.
He had talked to his family a lot while he was burying them and asked them what he should do now
. They hadn’t had much to say. Cormac’s pa was the most help. It had been a comfort talking to him. When the hole was mostly dug and Cormac was standing in the bottom looking out—he had dug them all plenty deep, there weren’t no animals gonna get them—he felt a calmness come over him. His pa would have told him to get on with it. “You can’t do anything about what’s done,” he had said on several occasions. “Just brush the dirt off your britches and keep a goin’.”
A time or two, Cormac had just curled up into a ball in the bottom of a grave in misery, and as he packed the last dirt on each grave, he told them how much he had loved them and how much he was going to miss them.
When the chore had been completed, he had fallen asleep; but when he came out of it and had his crying binge, he had accepted the situation as much as such a situation could be accepted. He was still mighty sad and would be for a long time to come whenever he thought about them, but being sad wasn’t gonna get the corn picked or the cows milked or the pigs and chickens fed. He had a farm needin’ care, crops that would soon need harvestin’, and the job was his for the doin’.
Digging this grave, now, was a horse of a different color. His family had been avenged and done for as much as could be. Now he had to finish getting rid of the lowlifers, as his pa would have called them, but they weren’t about to get their own graves. If they liked being together so all-fired much, they could just stay together and rot into a single pile of filth, worse even than manure.
They were all goin’ into the same hole. If they hadn’t been lying in his front yard, he would have just left them for the critters. “His front yard” was also going to take some getting used to.
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