Black Hills (9781101559116)

by Thompson, Rod

  All of the Fergusons’ plans for buying another farm, having children and grandchildren to hold and to love and give Christmas and birthday gifts to, grandchildren to whom to pass all of the valuable knowledge they had spent a lifetime acquiring, vaporized in an instant of cruel stupidity.

  Returning his attention to the three with their hands up: “You damn well better keep your hands up . . . and get off your horses,” Cormac said nastily, motioning with his pistol and not wasting any foolish words about what would happen to them if they didn’t follow directions. They damn well knew. They had the idea, but it was a bluff. Like most people, he carried but five bullets in his six-shot revolver for safety. His gun was now empty, but they didn’t know that.

  Once they were standing, he had them remove each other’s guns and throw them in the snowbank. Casually he picked one of the guns out of the snow and checked the load before holstering his own empty pistol.

  “Now take off your coats.”

  “Mister, what are you goin’ to do to us? It’s cold as hell.”

  “Just do it, or you’ll be in a place considerably warmer than you would like.”

  Unhappy about the turn of events, they just did it.

  He could see they weren’t carrying any belt guns.

  “Okay, you can put your coats back on again. Now, you . . .” He pointed at the man who had been doing the talking. “There’s the matter of some money. Go empty all of their pockets and put it on their chests.”

  Cormac clicked the hammer on his pistol as the man started to move and the man quickly stopped again.

  “Get my point?” he asked.

  The man nodded. “I get it. I won’t try anything. Believe you me, mister. You got the Indian sign on us. We believe you.”

  Cormac had the man bring him the money. The big man called Luther had more than five hundred dollars; the other three had a total of one hundred and fifty.

  “Mister, the little guy on the end has a . . . had a wife and two kids.”

  “For a married man, he made some pretty stupid choices now didn’t he?”

  The man nodded his agreement.

  “Now yours.”

  The three hesitated.

  “Trust me. You do not want to make me any madder at you than I already am.”

  Between them, they come up with another two hundred and seventeen dollars.

  “Is there any law where you come from?” Cormac asked.

  “There is a judge that comes through every month. He’s due back in another week.”

  “You take these guys back and tell the judge what happened and take these hundred and fifty dollars to the wife. The rest of the money is going to the wife of the man you guys just killed.”

  “Hey, mister. We didn’t kill him. That was Luther’s doin’.”

  “You didn’t stop him. You were as much to blame as him. You’ll probably tell the judge some cockamamie story to keep from getting any of the blame, but I’m not a lawman so it’s no skin off my nose. If it was up to me, I’d just shoot ya now and be done with it. In fact I’m still sorely tempted. You and your kind are too damn worthless to live. Now you load up them mangy bodies and git while I’m still feelin’ generous.”

  “What do we tell the judge? What’s your name?”

  “What are your names?”

  After they had told him, he repeated the names out loud, and then, liking the sound of his new nickname, he answered. “I’m Mack Lynch, but if I hear any stories about myself or Mrs. Ferguson being blamed for any of this, I will come and find each one of you, wherever you are, and I’ll finish what I probably should finish right now. Do you understand me?” They all were nodding they understood.

  Cormac didn’t realize that his action of drawing on and shooting down four men with five shots while being covered by one of them at the time, had just made him a legend. The would-be hard cases wouldn’t have lied about that for nothing. It was too good a story, and it had happened right in front of them. In fact, they were a part of it.

  They would each tell it many times, telling and retelling the event in detail every time they found someone willing to listen to them, anywhere, anytime: Mack Lynch, the fastest gun they had ever not seen. He was so fast, they would say, they never even seen his hand move.

  He refused their request to give them back their guns, and after he followed them far enough to make sure they were gone, he returned to Mrs. Ferguson. She was no longer rocking. She had lain down beside her husband with her head upon his chest and pulled his arm around her shoulders, as they must have lain a thousand times before. Rebecca Ferguson was silently crying with the numb empty-sickness that can only be recognized by someone who has experienced the same great personal loss. Cormac remembered all too well; his heart was breaking for her and his own tears were freezing on his cheeks.

  If there was anything with which Cormac had experience besides farming, it was death. He knew when losing someone deeply loved, the best thing to keep from going crazy was to have something needing doing. Additionally, he needed to get Mrs. Ferguson up from the frozen ground and get them both someplace where he could get some food into her, but he also knew she would not be interested in doing anything for herself, but she would do anything for her dead husband.

  “Mrs. Ferguson, I lost my sister and both of my parents in much the same way. I truly understand the deep pain and numbness you are going through, but we have to get him into town for a proper burial.” He reached for her hand. “Please let me help you up.”

  In all-engrossing agonized shock, she moved automatically, doing whatever she was told, standing head down with arms motionless at her sides, her tears frozen unnoticed on her cheeks. Cormac removed Mr. Ferguson’s heavy coat and hat and put them on her, over her objections. After that he tied the body to the nearly empty pack rack and lifted Mrs. Ferguson up onto Lop Ear. She was of very little help.

  With the snow deep in many places, the travel was agonizingly slow until they were passed by a steamboat chugging upriver that announced to the world with a few blasts of its steam whistle that it was going to put in at the next wharf, which was just coming into view around the next bend in the river. Cormac hurried to catch it.

  One dollar for each of them and fifty cents for each of the horses bought them passage on deck to Ft. Pierre where her sister lived; four-bits bought two beef sandwiches and two cups of weak but hot coffee. Rebecca Ferguson sipped a little coffee, but refused food. They docked in Pierre just before five p.m. Under other circumstances, the boat ride would have been a fun experience.

  With Mrs. Ferguson still riding in unexpressive silence, they took Mr. Ferguson’s body to the funeral home. At the suggestion of the funeral director, they then went out to buy John Ferguson a new suit and make arrangements for the barber to come and give him a bath, a shave, and a haircut before the funeral director dressed him and made him ready for his funeral on the morrow. With a wave of her hand, Rebecca still refused all offers of food.

  A saddle needing to be looked at in a store window display next to the barbershop conveniently located next to the “Men’s Haberdashery” gave Cormac the excuse he needed to make her do the shopping and take care of the arrangements by herself. He wanted her to have something to occupy her mind, and taking care of the man she loved was something she was accustomed to, and would have wanted it no other way.

  “Here, Mrs. Ferguson,” he offered. “Here’s the money back they cheated your husband out of and a bit more. There’s a new saddle in the window next door I want to look at,” he told her awkwardly. “I know nothing about suits anyway. I’ve never had one. So you go in and make the arrangements with this barber here and then go next door and pick out a nice suit for John. I should be back by then.”

  Unmoving, she stared numbly at the money in her hand for a long moment, and then silently nodded her head and, still holding the money, entered the barbershop. Cormac walked across the street to a point from which he could easily keep an eye on her through the store window.r />
  The winter sun had already set, making it dark and easy to watch her in the well-lighted shop. The man just finished by the barber was a gentleman who stopped before leaving to brush himself off and to watch Mrs. Ferguson while she paid the barber from the sheaf of bills she was still holding before opening the door for her. Cormac thought that was a nice gesture. He would have never thought of that. There was a lot he didn’t know about social graces that he would have to learn or he would stick out like a country goof. The man watched her walk next door to the men’s apparel shop before following her, without going in. Through the window, he watched her briefly before stepping to the corner of the alley, which ran beside the men’s store. Looking furtively in all directions without seeing Cormac, who had slipped into a shadowed doorway, he stepped into the dark alley, which Mrs. Ferguson would have to pass by on her way to the funeral home.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Cormac said to nobody. He window-shopped past a few stores in the direction of the funeral home, crossed the street, and walked slowly back up the other side to stop in front of the alley entrance and roll a smoke. The toe of a scuffed and worn boot protruded from the darkness near the wall not three feet away.

  “If you want some advice, friend,” Cormac said lowly, “I would let this one go by. I saw her and her husband in the village downriver and followed them out of town. But before I could make my move, another hombre came out of the bushes and shot the husband and told her to put up her hands.

  “Instead, she came out with a two-shot derringer from someplace I couldn’t see ’cause it came out so fast. She put one bullet right between his eyes. I decided it would be healthier for me just to help her get her husband into town and wait for the next one. You might want to do the same.”

  Cormac took a step before stopping once more to light his quirlie and chuckle in the darkness to the sound of running feet moving down the alley. Maybe that fella would think twice before trying to rob someone else . . . probably not.

  The funeral director, having recently handled the funeral for the mother-in-law of Mrs. Ferguson’s sister, gave Cormac directions to the sister’s house, and Cormac took Mrs. Ferguson there next. When the door opened and Mrs. Ferguson saw her sister, she again burst into unrestrained sobbing. To Cormac’s relief, her sister rose immediately to the occasion. The brittle expression on the face of the tall and stern-looking woman softened instantly, and she held her younger sister in silence, letting her cry while looking over her shoulder at Cormac in questioning confusion.

  Cormac explained to her what had happened and that Mrs. Ferguson had had no food to speak of all day, gently extracting himself from the situation against Mrs. Ferguson’s protests. She had quickly become accustomed to him doing for her.

  “Your sister will take care of you now,” he explained gently. “I have to locate a stable for Horse and Lop Ear, but I will see you tomorrow at the funeral.” He kissed her cheek, and she allowed herself to be held for a long moment until he gently pulled away. Remembering all too well what she was going through, his heart again went out to her, but he had to get shut of her; his own loss was not that far in the past.

  The funeral director knew his job. The next day he asked Mrs. Ferguson’s sister to hold her husband and five sons in the parlor to allow Mrs. Ferguson a few minutes of private time with her husband. After patiently waiting for her to come out on her own, the director loaded Mr. Ferguson into the black horse-drawn hearse with the help of Cormac and the brother-in-law, a spindly, hawk-nosed man who looked like he should have been an undertaker himself.

  Although the sun was warm, the weather was crisp and cold. The sad little family managed to fit into one buggy. Cormac followed them and the hearse the half-mile to the cemetery and one of the six graves the funeral director had previously paid the town drunk and his half-breed Indian friend to dig before the winter cold froze the ground solid.

  “Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for Thou art with us. And now, we return a good man and loving husband, John Bartlow Ferguson to your hands, oh God. We know you will welcome him home, and we pray that you assist his family and friends to get through this terrible ordeal.” With that, he shook the hands of all present, told the grieving widow sincerely how sorry he was for her loss, and drove the black hearse once more down the hill.

  So that’s how it’s done, Cormac thought. He had buried seven people, but this was his first real funeral. It wasn’t any more fun.

  “Mother, Pa, Becky,” he mouthed with his face turned upward and his eyes closed. “I love you, and I’ll always miss you.”

  The family misunderstood, but appreciated his tears. He wiped his eyes, and said his good-byes, agreeing to come by for dinner the next time he was in the area, and rode Horse down the hill. He had to restock his pack before catching the “Missouri Belle” that would take him back downriver.

  Of the three mercantile stores available, he settled on the store with the saddle in the window: Benson’s Supplies. The saddle was of beautiful black leather with intricate stitching, and Cormac wondered if he would ever be able to afford such a saddle. It didn’t matter; it was neither the right size for Lop Ear nor Horse anyway.

  Due west were the Black Hills, a land he had heard was of uncommon beauty, where gold was rumored, angry Indians guaranteed. No thanks, when for just a few dollars he could enjoy an easy boat ride far enough south to detour around the volatile Black Hills and the Badlands that stretched all the way into Wyoming Territory and then continue his western journey.

  Coming into town, he and Mrs. Ferguson had crossed the first railroad tracks he had ever seen. He crossed them again on his way back to the river, but this time, the first train he had ever seen was sitting on them, making very strange sounds, emitting steam from various locations and smoke from its stack as had the riverboat. The painted words on the side proclaimed it to belong to the Chicago and Northwestern Line. Lop Ear and Horse didn’t like it a bit and Cormac dismounted to stand between them, holding their bridles and talking to them.

  It was still some distance away but close enough to frighten them when the whistle blew. They reared up, nearly taking Cormac off the ground before he calmed them down. He could see the engineer looking straight at them when he blew the whistle again, laughing when it frightened the horses, making them jump and rear. “Numb-skulled dimwit,” said Cormac. Talking continually, he calmed them again and turned them to face the other direction while thinking he would like to talk to that engineer by hand.

  CHAPTER 8

  Eventually the train moved on as they heard the whistle of the riverboat. They made it onboard with no further incident, where Cormac refused a cabin in favor of staying with the horses below in what he had learned was called “the hold.” He didn’t think they were going to like being down there when the boat began to move, and he was right.

  They were all right once the boat was in motion, giving Cormac time the next day to go up on deck and watch the riverbanks and trees go by. Some people on the shore waved, and he waved back. After that, he sometimes was the first to wave at the shore people or those in small boats, and they waved back, mostly.

  The sun was shining, creating an unusually warm day. Riding a paddle wheeler, as it was called, was a fun experience, somewhat like a party atmosphere with a lot of people standing and sitting wherever they found comfortable. A few people held glasses of different kinds of liquids, and a small group of musicians wearing red-and-white striped clothing had gathered on the deck near the front of the boat around a piano in transit, playing a fast-paced music some called Ragtime. He overheard a cheerful and smiling, happy-faced woman obviously having a good time, explaining to her frumpy husband, who obviously wasn’t, that it was a fast-march tempo mixed with a syncopated work-song melody. From the look on her husband’s face and his manner of treating her, he was a husband wishful of being her wasband.

  A group of Indians camping on the bank backed away from the water as the boat drew
closer. The captain had apparently caught sight of them first as he had the boat much closer to the opposite bank than previously, returning to the center of the river when the Indians were out of range. One of the Indians shot an arrow at them in protest, or just to see how close he could come. Cormac waved with exaggerated enthusiasm. No one waved back.

  “Not a very friendly people, are they?” said a voice beside him. Cormac turned to see a middle-aged gentleman with gray mutton-chop sideburns reaching almost to his gray handlebar mustache above a gray goatee. He was dressed all in gray as well with a gray top hat and three-piece suit over a white shirt and gray bowtie. Cormac’s eyes merely skimmed over him on the way to his companion. Holding his arm was an attractive, younger woman. Pretty and also well dressed in an elegant green dress with matching jacket over a frilly white blouse sporting an amulet on a black neckband and carrying a parasol, she was enjoying the attention she was receiving. She was quite attractive, Cormac thought, as long as she didn’t have to compete with Lainey, especially if Lainey would have been wearing that green dress.

  Cormac returned his attention to the speaker. “Nope,” he answered the man. “They don’t seem to be. I think the captain purposely steered us away from them, but they didn’t give me the feeling of wanting to be too close anyway. They probably heard of the Sultana.”

  “What’s the Sultana?”

  “Steamboats have become pretty reliable,” the man answered as he lit a cigar, “but several have exploded, usually killing two or three hundred people. One working the Mississippi back in’65, the Sultana, killed more than eighteen hundred people when it exploded. Most were Union soldiers returning home after the war. Downright pity. They lived through the horrors of war only to get killed on their way home during peacetime. Now me, I fought for the Confederacy, but I still think it was a shame. Yes, sir. Damned shame, it was a right damned shame.”

  Cormac allowed as how riding the riverboat had been every bit the fun experience he had thought it was going to be, and it had certainly solved his problem of how to get across the Missouri river, but it was time to get off. At the next stop, in Omaha, they did just that. Now, being south of both the Badlands and the Black Hills, according to the ticket agent, they could continue westward on a mostly straight line to the next city on his journey: Cheyenne, in Wyoming Territory.