The Black Hills

by William W. Johnstone

  CHAPTER 5

  Hunter glanced over his shoulder at the six ten-gallon kegs of freshly fermented, coal-black ale stacked in two rows of three each, and secured with heavy ropes. Several saloons in Tigerville had standing orders for the stuff—even some owned by Yankees. In fact, over the summer, old Angus couldn’t make the grog fast enough to keep up with demand.

  “That’s Angus’s ale, yes,” Hunter told Stillwell.

  “Damn.” Stillwell drew a long breath, sniffing the air. “I swear I can smell it from here!”

  “What about it?” Hunter asked, trying to stop imagining his fists smashing the sheriff’s face until it looked like a ripe tomato smashed against a rock.

  Stillwell slid his cunning gaze from the crowd, which he was working like a veteran thespian, to Hunter. The crowd of deputies and townsmen waited in silence. So did Fowler. So did Hunter. Hell, even Bobby Lee appeared to be waiting for the sheriff’s next words.

  “I’m thinkin’ we might be able to settle this whole complex problem of the affidavit and the filing fee in a much simpler, friendlier, small-town fashion. How about you turn over one of your pappy’s kegs to me, and we’ll call the matter resolved? You know, there ain’t much I like about ole Angus Buchanon . . . or your brothers . . . or you, as a matter of uncontestable fact.”

  Stillwell’s eyes hardened briefly as they stared out at Hunter, but he was quick to soften his demeanor again with an ironic smile. “But I gotta admit I have a weakness for that rancid ole Confederate’s black Scottish ale—a fact I find hard to admit right out here in public, but admitting it I am, doggone it.” He gave a mock-fateful sigh.

  Several of the men around the wagon chuckled.

  “Well, it is good ale,” one of them said, keeping his voice down as though it were something he, too, were ashamed to admit.

  Hunter looked at Stillwell. “You want a keg of ale.”

  Stillwell only smiled.

  “If I turn over a keg of ale, you’ll forget about the filing fee and I can go on about my business?”

  Stillwell lifted his chin. “Soldier to soldier—absolutely.”

  Hunter studied him. Something told him it wasn’t going to be that simple. Still, handing over a keg of his old man’s ale was a hell of a lot simpler and cheaper than filling out some official document and paying fifty dollars to have it filed—if that was even how things worked. Hunter didn’t know, but he had a feeling Stillwell was full of mule fritters, which was typical for a Yankee. Most of them had it oozing out both ends.

  He shrugged a heavy shoulder and jerked his chin toward the ale. “All right, help yourself. One keg.”

  “I’d like you to fetch it for me.”

  Hunter stared at him. Stillwell stared back at him, chinned dipped slightly. The game continued. The mockery. Hunter could hear the snickers of the other men around him. Buck Fowler had lowered his revolver. He stood with the big popper hanging low by his side, his other fist on his hip, grinning in delight at Hunter, reveling in the sheriff’s takedown of a former Confederate.

  Stillwell beckoned. “Bring it on up here—a fresh keg of Angus Buchanon’s famous ale. I can taste it now. Whoo-eee. Even warm, it’ll cut the summer heat!”

  Hunter stared at Stillwell, who grinned back at him.

  Hunter glanced at the heavy-shouldered, hatchet-faced deputies standing around the wagon, also grinning. They held rifles or shotguns. Six-shooters bristled from their hips or from holsters thonged on their thighs.

  Hunter’s cheeks and ears were as hot as a blacksmith’s forge. Still, a little humiliation was a whole lot better than bloodshed. If he made a misstep here, not only would he likely pay the price with a hefty fine and time in jail—and possibly a necktie party held in his honor—his father and brothers would probably feel Stillwell’s heat as well.

  He wouldn’t put Stillwell past trying to make them complicit in Chaney’s death and going after them with hang ropes too.

  Hunter drew a ragged breath as he rose from the wagon seat. He glanced down at Bobby Lee, who returned his dubious look, flicking his bushy gray tail like an anxious cat.

  “Stay, boy,” Hunter told the coyote, who gave a low yip.

  Hunter stepped back into the wagon box. He untied the ropes from the heavy steel rings in each side panel, then leaned down and picked up one of the ten-gallon kegs. Straightening with a grunt, he set the keg on his right shoulder. He stepped over the side of the wagon and dropped to the street.

  Buck Fowler stepped back, making way for him, grinning, rising jubilantly up onto the toes of his boots and hooking his thumbs behind his suspenders, thoroughly pleased at the spectacle that Stillwell was making of an ex-Confederate, one of the hated Buchanons no less.

  Hunter knew that there were a few ex-Confederates in Tigerville, but they were badly outnumbered by Yankees, and they were wisely making themselves scarce. There was no point in a street fight that would likely turn into a lead swap faster than a whore could shed her pantaloons.

  Hunter would carry the beer keg into Stillwell’s office—a small price to pay, relatively speaking—and be on his way, leaving no more blood in his wake.

  Hunter mounted the porch steps, aware of all eyes on him. He crossed the porch and stopped, staring down at the Confederate flag tacked down with rusty nails. His heart skipped a beat, and a fresh burn of anger rose into his ears. He looked at Stillwell, who was still sitting with one hip on the porch rail, smiling with pugnacious satisfaction at the big blond Rebel with the keg on his shoulder.

  Stillwell had lit his stogie. Slitting his eyes, he exhaled a long plume of smoke toward Hunter.

  No one said anything. No sounds issued from the street or even from the town beyond it. The whore’s cries had faded; the dog had stopped barking. Not even any birds were chirping.

  It was as if everyone in Tigerville—men and animals alike—was aware of the pageant being played out here this afternoon—the takedown of one of the hated Buchanons, though no one had any reason to hate them except for the side they’d taken during the war.

  The deputies fronting the sheriff’s office were waiting to see if Hunter would walk on the flag—the flag he’d fought and nearly died for, the flag he’d seen so many of his brethren make the ultimate sacrifice for. There was no way not to walk on it unless he wanted to step back and take a running leap, which would only further humiliate him and buy him even more chips in Stillwell’s game.

  Hunter drew another breath and, staring straight ahead, strode forward. He’d just stepped onto the flag and was about to step off, when Stillwell said, “Wipe your feet.”

  Hunter stopped, whipped his head toward the lawman, narrowing one eye. He could feel a vein off the corner of that eye throb almost painfully.

  Stillwell’s own face flushed now in anger. He straightened, spread his boots shoulder-width apart, and hooked his thumbs behind his cartridge belt, narrowing both dark eyes. “You wipe the dung from your boots before you enter my office, Reb!”

  Several deputies snickered. One said something too softly for Hunter to hear. Someone was cackling delightedly under his breath and behind his hand.

  Hunter’s heart thudded.

  Stillwell’s eyes blazed at him.

  Hunter looked down at the flag beneath his boots. Between his boots lay the freshly smeared plop of Buck Fowler’s chaw.

  Hunter shifted the keg’s weight on his shoulder, drew another calming breath, then shuffled his boots, giving them a cursory wipe on the flag he’d almost died for more times than he could count. Chest burning with barely containable rage, he strode over the threshold and into Stillwell’s office as the crowd roared with laughter behind him.

  Hunter set the keg on Stillwell’s desk, then headed back through the door and out onto the porch.

  “Now, that, gentlemen, is what is known as a galvanized Yankee,” Stillwell yelled. “Let’s give him a big round of applause!”

  The crowd exploded, laughing and clapping, all jeering eyes on Hunter as the big ex
-Confederate cast one more parting glare at the laughing Stillwell, then strode down the porch steps and swung toward his wagon.

  “One last bit of business.” Buck Fowler raised his Remington and took aim at Bobby Lee sitting on the wagon seat. “Time to rid Tigerville of vermin!”

  Hunter swung to his left and buried the toe of his right boot in Fowler’s crotch. Fowler screamed and, jackknifing forward, triggered his Remington into his own right foot. As the deputy dropped the smoking Remy and clamped both hands over his smashed privates, Hunter slammed a savage left roundhouse against the man’s left ear, flipping him over sideways and leaving him howling and writhing in the fetal position.

  “Get him!” one of the deputies shouted.

  Two men lunged ahead of the others, swinging their fists. Hunter sidestepped and ducked the fist of Junior Edsel. He hammered the man’s face three times quickly—twice with his right, once with his left—turning the man full around and sending him sprawling into three deputies running up behind him.

  Vaguely aware of Stillwell laughing uproariously behind him, Hunter dodged another fist and buried a hard right in a soft belly, just above the large brass buckle of a cartridge belt. More deputies came at him. His pacifism turning to ashes beneath the fire raging inside him, he bulled forward to meet the onslaught, swinging his fists, twisting, turning, pivoting.

  His knuckles smashed jaws and noses and eyes and hammered bellies.

  Fists battered him, as well, though he was only vaguely aware, for the old battle berserker was awake inside him.

  He was as big or bigger than the men attacking him. Bigger, tougher, angrier. They’d pushed him too far, and now they were paying the price. He would likely pay later, but for now . . . oh, the sweet bliss of rage!

  Hunter shrugged a man off himself and pivoted to his right in time to see Bobby Lee leaping onto the shoulder of a man moving toward Hunter, leveling a sawed-off shotgun. Snarling, Bobby Lee sunk his teeth into the man’s neck. The man screamed and whipped the coyote off his shoulder, triggering both barrels of the barn-blaster skyward with a howitzer-like explosion.

  Bobby Lee gave a shrill screech and ran.

  Hunter leaped on the man’s back, driving him to the ground and smashing the back of his head with his fists. Two others grabbed Hunter’s arms and hoisted him to his feet. Three others took turns hammering Hunter without mercy, with fists and rifle butts. Between blows, Hunter saw a big, mustached deputy named Merriman bound forward, raising a Buntline Special and clicking the hammer back.

  “Step back, boys!” the big man shouted, thrusting the Buntline’s long barrel toward Hunter’s face. “I’m gonna finish the varmint!”

  Merriman’s head jerked sharply to one side. Blood and bone matter spewed from above his left ear. He staggered away, triggering the Buntline into the belly of one of the other deputies, making him howl like a poleaxed bull.

  The gut-shot deputy dropped to his knees, screaming. The two men holding Hunter released him, and Hunter fell to his butt in the street.

  The deputies were looking around, wondering who’d fired the shot that had killed Merriman, who now lay belly-down in the dust with only half his head intact, unmoving. Fowler was still in the fetal position, venting his anguish over his smashed oysters and ruined foot. It was as though he and the gut-shot deputy were in a contest to see who could yell the loudest.

  Otherwise, the street was quiet until a voice familiar to Hunter’s ears yelled, “Drop those weapons, you mangy cayuses, or there’s going to be more blood shed here today!”

  Hunter, still on his butt, cobwebs from the beating he’d taken floating around behind his eyes, shuttled his gaze to the livery barn on the opposite side of the street from Stillwell’s office. Behind a rain barrel on the building’s left front corner hunkered a willowy scarecrow of an old man with a gray beard and long gray hair flowing down from his battered gray Confederate campaign hat.

  Old Angus Buchanon aimed his prized ’66 Winchester, known as the Winchester “Yellowboy” for its brass receiver, over the top of the barrel. Though only one-armed, he could shoot as well as any two-armed man.

  “You heard the old rapscallion!” shouted another familiar voice. “Drop your guns and step back away from my little brother’s wagon, or we’ll fill you so full of lead you’ll rattle when you walk!”

  CHAPTER 6

  Hunter turned his head to his right to see his older brother, Shepfield Buchanon, standing against the high false façade of Scanlon’s General Merchandise, clad in fringed buckskins and aiming his own Henry. 44-caliber rimfire repeater toward the group around Hunter’s wagon.

  Shep was a big man, as big as Hunter, but he had more flesh on him than Hunter did—a good bit more. Close-cropped, sandy-brown hair was concealed by his cream sugarloaf sombrero. Bushy sideburns trailed down both sides of his broad, fleshy face, and a full mustache mantled his mouth.

  He stood with one boot cocked forward, holding the long, octagonal-barreled Henry straight out from his right shoulder. He hadn’t fought during the war—he’d stayed home to keep their small farm out of Yankee hands and to tend their ailing mother—but he was as good with a rifle as Hunter or any other man on the frontier.

  Neither was he too shabby with the horn-gripped Remington New Model Army revolver holstered low on his right thigh or the bowie sheathed on his hip.

  “What Pa an’ Shep said!” shouted the youngest Buchanon brother, Tyrell, who lay prone on the roof of the harness shop to the right of Stillwell’s office.

  The left-handed twenty-two-year-old was aiming down the barrel of his own cocked Winchester carbine, narrowing his left eye beneath the brim of his battered, funnel-brimmed Stetson. Tye’s long, straight, dark-red hair dropped to his narrow shoulders clad in a loose-fitting linsey-woolsey tunic. He wore a single cartridge belt crisscrossed on his chest, and a stag-butted, hand-carved Colt angled for the cross-draw on his right hip. Scraggly whiskers, the butt of much brotherly and fatherly ribbing, drooped from his chin.

  “You’re surrounded!” bellowed Angus Buchanon from behind the rain barrel, above the continued yelling of the gut-shot deputy and Buck Fowler. “Drop them irons or die! I ain’t gonna tell ya one more time!”

  The deputies looked around at each other. They turned to Stillwell, who stood above the steps of his office porch, the cigar smoldering in his left hand, his right hand draped over the grips of his holstered Peacemaker. His face was a stony mask in which his dark eyes were set like two lumps of charcoal.

  The gut-shot deputy’s cries had been dwindling. Now they fell silent as he lay back in the street and shivered out his ghost. Fowler finally stopped bellowing as well. He turned his pain-racked gaze toward Stillwell, whom all the other deputies were staring at, awaiting orders.

  The townsfolk had retreated to the boardwalks. Some had slipped inside the shops and saloons to avoid any lead that might be swapped. Those remaining on the boardwalks looked cautious, wary.

  “Don’t do it, Stillwell,” Hunter said. “Tell ’em to drop their guns.”

  Stillwell glared straight across the street at the Buchanon patriarch, old Angus. He slid his gaze to Shep standing on the roof of the mercantile. From Shep he looked at young Tyrell lying atop the harness shop, aiming down the barrel of his cocked carbine, waiting.

  Even from the ground near the wagon, Hunter could see a forked vein throbbing above the sheriff’s nose. The man’s jaws were set hard in mute fury, and his cheeks were mottled red.

  Finally, stiffly, he lifted his hand from his Colt, leaving the hogleg in its holster. He thrust his hand forward, bunching his lips and wrinkling his nose as he pointed at Angus behind the rain barrel. “Kill those Rebel trash!”

  A deputy near Hunter snapped his rifle to his shoulder, aiming toward Angus. He was rewarded with a third eye drilled through the dead center of his forehead. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  “Ah, hell,” Hunter muttered as the other deputies went to work, snapping rifles down from atop thei
r shoulders or clawing six-shooters from their holsters, shuffling their feet, pivoting on their hips, and trying to draw beads on the rooftop Buchanons.

  Three or four of the deputies might have gotten off shots, but it was mainly the three armed Buchanons who were popping caps. Orange flames lapped from the barrels of their long guns. Their bullets screeched through the air over the wagon to smash flesh and pulverize bones. It appeared to Hunter, looking on in mute horror, that every bullet his father and brothers hurled from their corresponding rooftops hit its target.

  The deputies danced bizarre death jigs, two almost hooking arms as though they were going to do-si-do together before they were thrown backward off their heels to hit the street in two dusty, bloody messes.

  One man fell wounded and crawled for the safety of a wagon parked in front of the mercantile. Another bullet careened in from a rooftop to drill the back of his head. He plopped down to his face and belly three feet from the wagon’s left front wheel.

  “I’m done!” rose a man’s shrill cry amidst the thunder. “I’m done! I’m done—ya hear? I’m done!”

  Hunter turned to see the man standing over near the post office, thrusting his arms straight up in the air. Hunter thought his name was Stanley. Charlie Stanley, a wanted pistoleer from Texas. It was widely known that most of Stillwell’s men had paper on them.

  “I’m done!” Stanley bellowed at Angus. “Don’t you shoot me!”

  Angus gazed down the smoking maw of his Yellowboy at the tall, lean deputy, who wore a filthy red bandanna around his neck and a black hat with a fresh hole in the crown. A flesh wound had drawn a red line across the outside of his left leg clad in gray denim.

  Shep and Tyrell held their fire, staring down at the deputy thrusting his hands in the air as though reaching for a ladder to heaven.

  Stanley turned toward Stillwell, who was standing where he’d settled before the shooting had erupted. The sheriff’s features were hard and pale. He held both hands straight down at his sides. His cigar smoldered where he’d dropped it on the step near his left boot.