Black Hills Hellhole (A Wild Bill Western Book 6)

by Judd Cole

  If his plan went well, this should be a night to remember for any Regulators who survived it. And since all of them were either murderers or accomplices to murder, Bill felt no regret for his part in it.

  At the last timbered ridge overlooking the reservation, Bill stopped the men by raising his scattergun high in the moonlit night sky.

  “Prepare for final movement to contact,” he ordered with strict military formality. “Check your weapons, your ammo, then your horses. Knock any sand out of your bullets now, or you’ll risk a stoppage under fire. Next check your horses. Look at the girth, the latigos, the stirrups. Also check each hoof for loose shoes.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done this plenty before,” Labun said with genuine respect. Lofley’s soldierly bearing, along with his evident eagerness to kill for the company, had begun to change Merrill’s mind about him.

  “Oh, I’ve sent a few featherheads to the happy hunting grounds in my time,” Bill said modestly. “Nothing personal. I shoot what I’m paid to shoot, then walk away like it’s none of my business—because it ain’t.”

  “Holy Christ,” Labun said softly, impressed but also a bit daunted by this man’s coldness.

  Bill kept his voice lowered. “All right, let’s raise dust. We’ll stage for the attack in that plum thicket out ahead about three hundred yards. That’ll put us downwind of their mangy curs. From here hold your mounts to a walk or the bit rings will clink.”

  Labun was thoroughly impressed by now. “You’re some pumpkins as a battle leader, Ben. I see Deke’s instincts was good. Hell, you’ve got this fight figured down to the last detail.”

  Wild Bill had to make a real effort not to laugh outright. All these plans had in fact been hatched by him and Coyote Boy. Hickok only hoped the hotheaded Lakota warriors remembered not to shoot at the lead rider.

  He stepped up and over, then settled his hips into the saddle.

  “Ahh ... who’s leading the charge?” Merrill asked.

  Labun knew the rules in combat: the second-in-command always led the actual fighting so the commander survived to fight on. But he was in for a pleasant surprise.

  “The men who get the big money take the biggest risks,” Bill replied. “I lead the assault; you ride behind me to relay commands back. We’ll attack in a staggered-echelon formation. Keep the men at five-yard intervals. Never mind women and kids or the old ones, they’re a waste of time and ammo. It’s the armed braves we have to put out of the fight.”

  By this time Wild Bill was almost confident that few, if any, of his men would later blame his military knowledge or tactics for what was about to happen. Except for Labun, who would be closer.

  They reached the plum thicket overlooking the Sioux camp in its hollow a hundred yards below them. Fires sawed in the wind, and a crowd had gathered to watch two adolescent boys locked in a wrestling contest.

  Bill posted in the middle of the rank so all his men could hear him. He swiped at the gnats swarming his face.

  “When I charge, that’s your command to attack. Remember—this is a sweep, not a sustained engagement. We ride through once, airing as many fighting Indians as we can. We nab the big chief or, failing that, at least kill him. Then we regroup past those bluffs to the north. Make your final preparations, men.”

  Now all the horses stood prancing, eager for action. When the last man was ready, Wild Bill heeled the line back hard in the flanks. He shot out across the grassy clearing, and with a collective shout, the Regulators followed suit.

  As previously arranged, Hickok very soon fired both barrels of his Spencer shotgun, letting Coyote Boy and the rest know where he was in this melee. The Sioux had set up two defensive lines of riflemen hidden in shallow pits. They rose up now, yipping their fierce war cry.

  A withering line of fire immediately stunned the attackers. Their brave battle cries turned into agonized death groans, or the surprised wails of the badly wounded.

  “Christ!” Bill played his part to the hilt. “It’s a trap, boys, belay the attack order! Sweep their far flanks to escape, then head for the rendezvous point!”

  But even that apparently sound command was part of the trap. As the fleeing Regulators veered wide around the lines of rifles, they rode smack into the siege defenses. These included pitfall traps and trip holes that snapped horse’s legs.

  One scene took the breath even from a seasoned fighter like Hickok. He watched a desperate Regulator spur his horse hard to clear a line of bushes; an eye blink later, the man flew over the pommel and broke his neck when he landed—behind him, his horse had impaled itself, midleap, on a line of pointed stakes. The death cry it unleashed drowned out every other noise ... until the rider, still alive and shrieking, was scalped and castrated.

  Wild Bill averted his face, tasting bile. A second later a stray bullet tagged his left calf, passing through clean and close to the surface. It was piddling, as battle wounds went, hardly even showing any blood. But he actually grinned at the burning pain—further proof he had not collaborated in this obvious disaster.

  “Belay the attack!” Bill repeated to the thoroughly routed night riders. “Guide on me! This way, every man saves himself! Retreat!”

  ~*~

  Next day, news of the failed attack at Copper Mountain swept through Deadwood like a comber.

  One wounded man who had managed to escape bled to death during the ride back. He was hauled into town with his ankles tied under his horse’s belly. In all, five men were killed, three wounded including Ben Lofley. Only four Regulators escaped unscathed—the first defeat in their long reign of terror.

  On the second day after the ruinous attack, Deke Stratton again called an emergency meeting in his office. And once again Ben Lofley was deliberately excluded. This time, however, Stratton did not have to be convinced—thanks to startling new evidence, he finally realized who Ben Lofley really was.

  “I still don’t understand it,” he told the men gathered round him in the rustic office. “You men who survived swear that Hickok fought well. Hell, he was even wounded.”

  “Probly one of our own bullets,” Labun insisted. “I been thinking on it. Lofley—I mean Hickok— fired his scattergun way before he had any target. I’m thinking it was a signal.”

  “Sure,” piped up one of the Regulators. “Them Injins missed Hickok deliberate like. It was all planned out.”

  “I think I’ve already proved that,” Keith Morgan interjected. “You’ve all got to see this.”

  Morgan rapped his knuckles on a buckram hardback titled Heroes of the American Frontier. It lay open to a page that showed an early sketch of Pony Express Riders Bill Cody and J. B. “Wild Bill” Hickok. The rare photo of Hickok showed him without his trademark mustache, sideburns, and long curls—almost a dead ringer for Ben Lofley.

  “What first tipped his hand, Keith?” Deke asked.

  “I started wondering, boss, when I noticed that ‘Lofley’ had him a gesture just like yours—he kept lifting one finger to smooth his lip, just like you do to your mustache. That made me think maybe this hombre had him a mustache for a long time. So I started leafing through all them books you’ve got out at the ranch but never read. Damn near crapped when I found this.”

  Deke nodded, his coffee-colored eyes thoughtful. The men surrounding him were Morgan, Labun, the teamster named Steve, and the Regulators who survived the debacle at Copper Mountain.

  “Face it like men,” Deke said quietly. “That bastard Hickok broke it off inside us. By now he’s got more than enough rope to hang us all.”

  “Then why’n’t we just kill him?” one of the Regulators demanded.

  Deke snorted. Labun answered for him.

  “You want to brace him, Johnny? A man who escaped from the Rebs three times, who took out the McCanles gang by hisself? A gunman with more than forty kills to his credit?”

  The hothead flushed and fell silent.

  All this prompted another man to ask nervously, “Where is Hickok now?”

  “Relax.
Today I sent him on a payroll run to Rapid City,” Deke said. “He’s not due back until tomorrow.”

  Deke, still calm and unruffled, next spoke in a tone of almost wistful regret.

  “Boys, I never thought we’d crater first.” He used a miner’s term for caving in under pressure. “But we’re whipped good now. Why fight a lost cause? Even if we could somehow plant Hickok, the damage is likely done by now. Pinkerton knows everything—names, dates, amounts, Christ knows what else.”

  “So what do we do now?” Johnny said. “Just hang up our shooters and wait for the big man to serve us warrants?”

  Deke’s eyes cut to the map on the wall behind his desk. He gave all of them a nervy little smile.

  “Not at all. We’ve still got the Inner Sanctum, don’t forget. A few weeks from now, everyone will think we’re long gone—South America, maybe, or even Europe. The danger to us will go way down. Then we can slip up topside again, after dark, and really pull foot.”

  Deke’s gaze swept every man. “It won’t be ideal, but it will sure’s hell beat a stone cell at Yuma. As of tonight, every damned one of us is going to literally disappear from the face of the earth.”

  ~*~

  With the illegal raid on a federal Indian reservation, Wild Bill finally had a specific crime and the specific names of perpetrators. Now he had only to wait for a special courier from Pinkerton to arrive with duly prepared arrest warrants. The most serious charges would fall to Stratton, Morgan, and Merrill Labun since Beckman was dead.

  However, Wild Bill knew he had new troubles when, two days after the disastrous raid at Copper Mountain, Stratton sent him on a payroll run to Rapid City.

  This was a task usually assigned to Merrill Labun. The only good reason for sending the security chief was to get him out of the way. So Hickok fully expected trouble when he returned from Rapid City.

  What he did not expect, however, was to find all the major players gone. Vanished was a better word for it. Stratton, Morgan, Labun, even the Regulators who were still ambulatory—every one of them had evidently absconded en masse while Bill was gone.

  Hickok immediately telegraphed Pinkerton, who proceeded to alert federal and local law officers in the surrounding states. Railroad and stage line officials were also notified. Almost certainly these fugitives from justice had split up. The telegraph made it virtually impossible that all of them could slip through the ever-tightening net.

  And yet, apparently, that’s just what had happened. Later, on the first day of his return to Deadwood, Bill talked to Lonnie at the feed stable.

  “None of them men left town that I seen, Ben,” the kid insisted. He rolled his head over his shoulder to indicate the stalls.

  “Mr. Morgan and some of them others? They’ve still got horses and saddles here. They ain’t gone nowhere.”

  “No,” Bill replied thoughtfully. “I reckon not.”

  But obviously they were gone. For one thing, Stratton had hastily appointed one of the sub surface-water engineers as temporary mine supervisor. Also, Bill found out a day later that Deke had deeded his horse ranch over to his foreman.

  “It’s just a paper arrangement,” Hickok assured Josh. “It was done to thwart any grab by the law or angry creditors.”

  Josh had quit his cover job to work full time helping Bill with this baffling new twist. Hickok, however, still feared this town the way the Greeks feared Troy. So he still took pains to disguise his identity. Also, he hung on to his status as security chief—this left him free to poke around at will.

  His efforts soon turned up an ominous bit of information: One of Keith “Boomer” Morgan’s last official acts, before he disappeared with the rest, was to visit the powder magazine.

  There, according to the requisition sheet he filled out as required, he checked out three galvanic plungers—electrical detonators for explosive charges—and an entire spool of copper electrical wire.

  Bill mulled all those odd clues while he and Josh ate supper at a cafe across the street from the Number 10.

  “Find anything in Deke’s office?” Josh asked.

  “If there was anything there, he took it,” Bill replied.

  “How about Cassie? She knows Stratton as well as anybody.”

  Bill grinned. “Better. That’s why she’s obviously keeping her mouth shut. She’s sweet as clover honey until I mention the question of Stratton’s whereabouts. Then, suddenly, she gives me the frosty mitt.”

  “She’s protecting herself?”

  Bill nodded. “Yup. Just like she expects Deke to look her up again. As if he’s not very far away, even.”

  “Mr. Lofley?” a voice cut in. It was the young Chinese kid from the Number 10. “Miss Saint John sent this, sir.”

  The boy laid a folded note near Bill’s plate and scuttled back across the busy street to the saloon.

  “Perfumed,” Josh said, feeling a sting of jealous envy as Bill unfolded and read the note. “Let me guess. She’d like you to stop by her suite later to look at her etchings?”

  If Hickok heard his companion, his puzzled face didn’t show it. He stared at the brief message, frowning, yet excited too.

  “Yeah,” Bill muttered. “This is the key to the mint right here.”

  Josh pushed his plate away. “What?” he demanded. “What is it, Bill?”

  “You’re right, Joshua,” Bill said thoughtfully. “Cassie does know Stratton well, and she is protecting herself. But she’s also solid bedrock under those fancy feathers of hers. Look at this.”

  He handed Josh the note. There was no salutation or closing signature, just one puzzling line: Fish go to the bottom in hot weather—or so I’ve heard.

  Josh shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  Bill flipped four bits onto the counter to cover their meal. “Good thing I do, ain’t it? Let’s get thrashing, kid.”

  “Where we going?”

  By habit, Hickok carefully studied the street before he stepped outside.

  “Fishing,” he answered the confused reporter. “Hurry up while they’re still biting.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “But you said you already went through Stratton’s desk,” Josh pointed out as Wild Bill led him into Deke’s deserted office.

  “Yeah. But now I need to look behind his desk,” Bill replied as he crossed to the big map of Harney’s Hellhole.

  Bill began a close scrutiny of the detailed map. Josh, watching him, suddenly caught on.

  “Man alive! Fish go to the bottom. I get it.”

  “What else,” Bill assured him, “could explain the complete disappearance of so many men?”

  “Aww man, what a story!”

  “Yeah,” Hickok agreed dryly, “when it’s over. Which it ain’t yet.”

  Josh, too, began studying the map.

  “The stopes that’re still active,” Bill told him, “are numbered with an A after the number to show it’s still being worked. Ones with a C are supposedly closed.”

  “What does ‘closed’ mean? Just worked out?”

  “And sealed. By law they have to blow up the tunnel leading in and seal off the access shafts from above.”

  “Gripes,” Josh complained. “Look how many closed stopes there are. More than thirty. If Stratton and the rest are down there, they could be in any of those chambers.”

  Hickok nodded. Josh, eyes narrowed in puzzlement, watched Bill light a match and hold it close to the map.

  “Why are you doing that?” Josh demanded. “Your eyes getting that bad?”

  It was Josh’s first mention to Bill of his failing vision. Bill heard him, but chose to ignore it.

  “There,” he said triumphantly. “Take a look. At closed stope number 13, see it?”

  Josh moved closer and looked in the circle of light. Now he clearly made out a number of fingerprint smudges.

  “All the rest are clean,” Bill said. “But not this one. Stratton spent a lot of time looking at this map—looked at it most of the time he was talking to me.”


  “And he pointed to this stope more than once,” Josh finished for him.

  “Now you’re thinking like a Pinkerton. C’mon, let’s go take a look at the lift-shaft of 13-C, check out my hunch.”

  “Does it have to be number 13?” Josh complained.

  “Of course it does,” Bill said sarcastically. “This is Deadwood, ain’t it?”

  ~*~

  Stope 13-C was located far across the company lot, on a barren slope that had long been deserted. The shaft house on top, which once housed the steam lift to take workers in or out, had been leveled. That was true for all the abandoned stopes.

  With one big difference here. When Josh and Bill, muscles straining, threw back the huge wooden cover, they did not find a shaft filled with gravel. The empty shaft gaped up at them like a hungry maw.

  “You were right, Bill,” Josh gloated, keeping his voice down.

  “Something tells me,” Bill said, “this is too simple. That can’t be their only way in or out. They must have punched an escape shaft out, too. God knows where, though.”

  “What do we do?” Josh asked. “Get help and go in?”

  Bill shook his head.

  “It would take time to get enough men that we could trust. Besides, a posse of men would make so much racket going in, Deke and his bunch would have warning. Don’t forget—Morgan took detonators with him.”

  Josh watched Bill shove his thin hopsack coat aside. He had donned his Colt Peacemakers since returning from Rapid City. Josh watched him palm both wheels, checking the action.

  “We’ll need rope,” Bill said. “Plenty of it.”

  “We’re going down there?” the kid demanded.

  “I am. You’re going to wait topside, in case they come up somewhere on the lot. Don’t try to engage them if they do. Just fire your pistol into the shaft once as the signal I should come up.”

  “Bill, you’ve gone loco! I know you’re some pumpkins with a gun. But there’s nine, maybe ten of ’em down there!”