Black Hills (9781101559116)

by Thompson, Rod

  “Who are the Helawees?” Cormac asked when Abe’s cousin got over a sudden choking spell.

  “They’re just a small tribe of Indians come down from the north,” Abraham explained. “A very brave bunch; the only thing keeping them from being great warriors and hunters is their poor sense of direction. They spend a lot of time climbing tall trees, looking around, and calling out, “Where the helawee?”

  “Okay, yeah, yeah,” laughed Cormac, waving his hand. “I’ve been hearing talk about gold in the Black Hills.”

  “If you’re thinkin’ ’bout goin’ in after it, I wouldn’t. According to the newspaper article, the Laramie Treaty gave the Black Hills to the Sioux for their absolute and undisturbed use and occupation forever, and now, according to the new paper, Custer claims to have found gold there, and people are beginning to want it back, and the Indians are understandably disturbed with the Wasichus, that’s Sioux for white men.”

  “Two aus!” interjected Cuz excitedly, pointing at Lop Ear and Horse. “Two aus!”

  “Well, I’ll be,” answered Abraham. “I think you’re right, Cuz.”

  “Now what’s that all about?” asked Cormac.

  “He just realized that you are the one the Indians call Two Horse.”

  “What?”

  “We been hearing about you. Two Horse. They speak of a white man who rides with two mighty horses faster than the wind, and they call him Two Horse.”

  “That explains it. They have tried to catch us a time or two,” responded Cormac. “The leader of the group that just left pointed at my horses and yelled something to the others on their way out. Well, that’s wonderful. That’s what that is. That’s just damned wonderful. We better get out of here in case they return with a bunch of their friends.”

  “After today they’ll probably call you Two Horse with Long Rifle. It’ll be big medicine if any of them can kill you and take your horses. You’re a challenge for them, so watch yourself. It would be a great honor to hang your scalp on their lodge pole and have your horses. Quite a coup.”

  With the help of Cuz and Abe, they were packed and moving within five minutes. After riding back to Virginia City, the three got what they needed and were saying good-bye at the edge of town when a rider came tearing into town, hell-bent for leather. “Cave-in! Cave-in!” he yelled. “The Flying H had a cave-in!”

  CHAPTER 12

  Damn!” erupted Cormac. “I gotta go. That’s where I worked until a few days ago. If you guys wanna come help, we’ll be needin’ all the help we can get.”

  An unselfish lot, western people were prone to helping each other. The mountain men easily agreed.

  “Okay. Thanks,” Cormac said. “Go north and bear just a little west for about fifteen miles, and I’ll meet you there.”

  “Where are you going? They’ll be needing help right away.”

  “I know,” Cormac answered. “That’s why I can’t wait for you. I’ll go on ahead.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. We are ready to leave with you right now,” Abe said with a look of confusion on his face.

  “It’s quicker to show you than explain,” Cormac answered, loosening Lop Ear’s reins. “Let’s go, boy!” he called. Lop Ear sensed the urgency in his voice and leaped forward, full out within steps; Horse was right with them.

  In amazement, the mountain men watched them ride away. “So that’s what the Indians are talking about,” Abraham told Cuz as he put the spurs to his Appaloosa.

  With both horses white with sweat, Cormac crested the hill faced by the mine entrance. Unloading before Lop Ear had come to a stop, he handed his reins to a woman in a crowd of flustered onlookers. “Walk him until he cools off.”

  “What about your other horse?”

  “She’ll follow,” Cormac told her, and ran to the mine. A flurry of activity was happening at the entrance. A man Cormac did not recognize was walking quickly into the mine with a bottle of explosive. Cormac grabbed his arm to stop him.

  “Wait! What are you doing with that?”

  “The shaft collapsed. We gotta get it open again quick before they run out of air, if they are even still alive.” He tried to pull away from Cormac.

  “No!” said Cormac. “An explosion could make it worse. We have to dig them out.”

  “I’m a miner,” said the other. “This is the only way.”

  “I worked in this mine until a couple of days ago,” Cormac told him. “I know what I’m talking about. We can’t use explosives.”

  “You must be new then. I’ve been doing this for years.” He yanked his arm free. “We are going to blow a way in to them,” he said as he started walking away. Cormac grabbed him again with his right hand and the bottle of explosive with the left. Letting go of the man’s arm, Cormac ended the argument with a hard right to the jaw. Turning while the man was still falling; he returned the explosive to the shack as Laurie rode up with a group of ranch hands, and the man trying to blow up the mine was hightailing it over the hill.

  “Where’s your dad and brothers?” he asked her as she ran up to him.

  “They went to Denver to do some business. I’m in charge of the ranch. Lucas is down in the mine.”

  “I just took a bottle of blow-up juice away from some guy heading into the mine. This is a hard rock mine and an explosion might cause more harm than good. Dalton!” he called to the closest man he seen. “Guard the explosive and don’t let anybody get to it. Shoot ’em if you have to. Laurie! I want to look in the mine. Get your men here and wait for me. Don’t let anybody do anything. There are two mountain men who will be along shortly. Have them wait with you.” Without waiting for her response, he rushed into the shack for a cap to hold a candle and then into the mine where he grabbed a handful of candles before continuing down to the blockage.

  About half the way down to the working, the shaft was filled high with broken rocks. Something didn’t look right to Cormac, but he couldn’t put his finger on it or take the time to worry about it. The last timbers visible were lying cracked, broken, and splintered on the floor, half covered with rocks, dirt, and boulders. They would have to start digging by hand.

  Laurie did not think it strange at all to be regarding the men as her men. She had been left in charge, and that’s the way it was. She waited with Dalton by the miners’ shack as her men surrounded her. “Mack is back. He went to look at the mine to decide what to do. Everybody wait right here until he does.”

  Most heads were nodding. “Why are you letting him say what we should do? I thought he walked away yesterday?” asked a cowhand called Tex.

  “That don’t matter,” she answered. “He’s back, and I’m glad. He’s the best man for the job.”

  “But who gave him any authority to do anything? He don’t even work here anymore.”

  Laurie looked him in the eye. And then with an edge in her voice, “He came back to help, and that is how it’s going to be. You say one more word about it you won’t be working here anymore. Now shut up!”

  Cormac called from the entrance, “Laurie! Have the men get miner’s hats and candles from the shack and bring them in. The guy I took the nitro away from is gone. Have somebody keep an eye out for him. He’s a wiry little guy with long blond hair.”

  “I know him. He worked here for a few days when you were out at the line shack. Lucas fired him for stealing a little silver out in his pockets every day. He thought nobody would notice, but we all grew up with this mine; we’re not pilgrims. We’ll watch for him.”

  Laurie was wearing a miner’s cap and comfortable work clothes. There was no time for silly schoolgirl nonsense; there was work to be done. She brought the miners in to Cormac.

  “I want to go outside to check something out,” he told her. “You line up the men to start digging here in a fire brigade line to the outside. Have two in front with picks to loosen up rocks and pass them back to the next in line and so on until they can be dropped outside. Use buckets for the dirt and small rubble. Pick a couple strong people t
o use a double-jack on the big rocks and throw them into an ore cart to push out. Then have a second ore cart and someone standing by to push out the full ones and empty them. If you have to make any adjustments to that plan, do what you think is best. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Pull in as many of the people from outside as you can get a hold of, and above all else, do not let anybody get in here with explosives.” He repeated himself. “Anybody.”

  Cormac ran up the shaft to the outside as Abe and Cuz arrived. He commandeered two people to cool their horses. To some bystanders, he ordered, “Go in the shaft to Laurie Haplander and ask her what she needs you to do.” A few of them weren’t moving. “Now!” he ordered. “I said now! There are people’s lives at stake, and we don’t have much time.” He got behind them and began pushing them into the mine. Grumbling, they went.

  Turning to the mountain men, he said, “Grab any horse and come with me.” He ran to where the woman was walking his horses. “Thanks,” he told her, and stepped up onto Lop Ear. With Horse following, he ran them around the entrance and straight back about fifty yards.

  Cormac explained to the mountain men, “One wall of the mine gets saturated after every rain and makes working it too dangerous. There has to be something corralling that rainwater and spreading it out into the hill. We’re looking for a varmint hole up here somewhere: a skunk or coyote den, or maybe a prairie dog hole. Those things will spread out underneath the ground like a miniature mine and go on forever. I tried to dig one up that was ruining my mother’s vegetable garden back in Dakota, but gave up right quick when the hole got too deep. Then I tried to drown him out.

  “I dug a trench from an Artesian well that we had and let water run into the hole all day and all night, but it never did fill up. I don’t know where in the hell all that water went. Back down to the Artesians, I guess. I think that’s what’s happening here. I think if we can find it, the dirt will be softer, and we can dig quicker. Spread out about fifteen feet on each side of me and lets all stay even,” he instructed the mountaineers. After guiding Lop Ear to a point that he thought was approximately a straight line from the entrance, he waited for Abe and Cuz to get in position.

  As a unit, they dismounted and searched slowly forward. About two hundred feet later, Cormac turned right to make a pass back in the opposite direction. It was on the third pass that Abe called him. “I think I got it, Mack.”

  Somebody had made a small dam with rocks to catch rainwater and direct it into a prairie dog hole.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Cormac said in amazement. “What the hell do you suppose that was for?”

  Abe responded, “Don’t know. Makes no sense that I can see.”

  “Me neither,” echoed Cuz.

  “Whatever it’s here for, it’s probably the reason one wall of the mine stays damp all the time,” answered Cormac, shaking his head. “Makes no sense to me either, but I’m not going to worry about it now. We gotta get to those guys below before they run out of air, and I figured the soft dirt would be the fastest. Let’s go get some help and tools and we’re going to need some timbers. This dirt is going to crumble easy.” Beside Lop Ear’s left front foot were a horse’s hoof prints with one being made by a deformed hoof.

  Cormac dismounted to study on it. There were old and new tracks made by the same horse making a clear statement that the horse making the tracks had been there many times. He recalled seeing that print before during his first roundup.

  While getting more men and tools, Cormac checked on Laurie. The rocks and dirt were flowing in a steady stream. One of the two men, dirt covered, sweating, and swinging picks and double-jacks with force and regularity and really putting his back into it, was familiar. Cormac was surprised to recognize Laurie’s antagonistic brother, Marcus.

  Other neighbors and townsfolk had come to help. There was only room for so many people in the shaft, and Laurie was alternating the volunteers in and out to keep fresh workers and the material flow moving as quickly as possible.

  Cormac explained that he was going to put together a crew and start another shaft from the other end where it was damp and soft. If one shaft didn’t pan out, maybe the other would. He had Cuz and Abraham hitch a team to the wagon of new timbers sitting by the shaft while he rounded up workers and tools to start digging. Abe and Cuz were right in the thick of it. Tough mountain men accustomed to living and surviving in the out-of-doors, they were well muscled and outworked any four other men.

  Being damp, the soil was soft, making the dirt and rock removal go quickly, but they were slowed down by the necessity of having to timber the walls frequently to keep them from collapsing; they were digging straight down. Following Laurie’s lead, Cormac alternated workers, taking his own turns, keeping fresh workers in the hole. A portable hand-crane on a movable base was put into play to haul out the bigger boulders, or if they were too large to deal with, the shaft was dug around them. More townsfolk and neighbors were arriving steadily.

  During a break, Cormac went to check on Laurie and found her tired and dirty. She was working right in the line with the others. He was proud of her. She noticed him watching and smiled. Cormac smiled back and returned to his crew; obviously, she had hers well under control. With torches, they worked through the night.

  While Laurie’s crew was making steady progress, Cormac had ever-increasing trouble keeping the walls from collapsing. The sun came up to a bright day, and Cormac’s hole had narrowed in width to a size big enough for only two men to work at a time. The workers in both crews were tiring faster and needed relief more often, but little by little, the holes continued to deepen.

  By late afternoon, out of necessity, the hole size was narrowed to being only wide enough for one worker, leaving Cormac alone in the hole, working on loosening out of the soft dirt the heavy boulders that no one else had the strength to move. His arm and leg muscles were screaming, his back was aching, his lungs hurt with every breath, and he had a pounding headache when he heard a welcome voice from above him.

  “Vaught yooouu doin’ down dere, friend Carrmac? Keepin’ all da fun for youself, I tink. Cummed up from outta dere und I sho yoouu ow it’s dunn, I tink. Yaah, shuur.” “Carrmac” was quite happy to let the big Swede “sho ’em ow it vas dunn.”

  He rested for quite some time, until he could see Sven beginning to labor.

  “Okay, you big Swede,” he called down. “YOOUU cummed up oughta dere und let me hav turn now. Yaah shuur!”

  They rotated twice more before Cormac broke through. He was moving mechanically, without thinking. Dig out a boulder and hold it up for someone to take from him, and then do it again, until a boulder he was trying to pull from the side of his mini-shaft fell away and disappeared. It confused his exhausted mind. He didn’t understand where it went, until he heard a cheer coming out of the hole that had been left by the boulder.

  Happy voices were calling and hollering. He had broken through the ceiling of the main chamber. He recognized the voice of Lucas calling out that they were all right, and that he was just in time. They had run out of air, one had already died, and three passed out. A few more minutes would have seen them all dead.

  Cormac was afraid that his shaft was going to collapse at any time and stopped digging. He explained that Laurie was bringing another crew in through the original shaft.

  “Laurie? Did you say, Laurie? I thought I heard you say Laurie.” Lucas was having a hard time believing what he had heard. Cormac assured him that yes indeed; his baby sister was coming to his rescue.

  Having removed his shirt that kept getting hung up on sharp-edged boulders, Cormac acquired rope burns while being pulled out with the help of a rope hooked to the hand-crane. He took his crew around to the main shaft, and after directing food and water to be lowered down to the miners, he went to help Laurie.

  He was dirty and black from working in what was now being called the air shaft, he took his place in line and helped pass the boulders and buckets of dirt outside. Laurie walked by on the way out
on some mission without recognizing him covered in dirt and sweat-made mud, only to return shortly, nearly passing him a second time. She glanced at him, and then looked again.

  “Mack!” she exclaimed, rushing to him. “You’re exhausted. Get out of here. Go lay down before you fall down.”

  He pushed her hands away. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, and kept passing whatever was handed him down the line. The more workers they had in the line, the faster the shaft would be reopened.

  They dug the rest of the day and through another night. Cormac was no longer aware of his surroundings. His movements were completely automated. Take what was handed him on the right and pass it to the left, and repeat.

  At some point he heard cheers, and people quit handing him buckets and boulders. He thought himself dreaming when he heard Mr. Haplander’s voice and felt hands guiding him to somewhere. He knew he was dreaming when he realized he was lying on the grass next to Laurie again.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I’m sorry.” He mumbled the words over and over until his aches and pains disappeared as he fell into exhausted sleep.

  Still on the grass, Cormac awakened seventeen hours later with a pillow under his head and covered with a blanket. The sky was a deep, deep blue with a few puffy white clouds. Laurie was sitting in a chair nearby with her parents and family. Every muscle he had was stiff, and he moaned when he moved.

  He had lots of immediate attention, all wearing smiles.

  “They didn’t want to move us and just let us sleep on the grass where we passed out,” Laurie told him. “I’ve been awake about an hour. How do you feel?”

  Cormac stretched one limb at a time. “Everything still works, how are the miners?”

  “We only lost one. If you hadn’t come back, we would have lost all twelve.”