The Black Hills

by William W. Johnstone

  He may have underestimated his ability a moment ago, when he’d first sprung into action. Now, however, the note on the energy he’d borrowed from deep inside himself just after he’d spied the rock was being called due.

  He’d run maybe half a dozen yards, each step growing heavier and more uncertain than the one before, when his knees buckled. He hit the ground with a grunt, and flopped onto his back. Hooves drummed behind him. The other riders circled him while Stillwell bellowed and cursed, the clay screaming angrily as it finally scrambled to its feet.

  Hunter looked up. Dakota Jack was laughing while extending his Colt’s revolving rifle straight down at Hunter, one-handed, his other gloved hand holding his reins. “You had your chance, Frank,” Dakota Jack bellowed, tears of humor dribbling down his pocked and pitted cheeks carpeted with a curly, sun-bleached blond beard. “Now it’s my turn!”

  Jack closed his eyes suddenly.

  His head jerked so sharply to his left that his hat flew off. His torso sagged out over that side of his saddle. At the same time, his right hand opened, and the Colt’s revolving rifle dropped to the ground six feet away from Hunter.

  The blast of the rifle that had just blown a hole through Dakota Jack Patterson’s head reached Hunter’s ears as the notorious gunman himself sagged farther out from the side of his horse, which was sidestepping now, startled.

  All the other men sitting their horses around Hunter stared at Dakota Jack in mute shock. As Jack dropped to the ground and his horse reared, whickering, the same rifle that had ventilated Dakota Jack belched again, again, and again. The men around Hunter cursed, raising their rifles in one hand while checking their frightened horses down with their other hand.

  Bullets thumped into the ground around them.

  One slammed into a rifle stock, evoking a sudden yelp from Weed Zorn, who cursed and dropped the rifle with the cracked stock.

  “Ambush!” one of the other riders bellowed.

  “Pull out!” another yelled. “Pull out! Pull out!”

  Hunter reached for Dakota Jack’s blood-speckled rifle. It was just out of reach. He rose to hands and knees and crawled toward it, hearing the dwindling thuds of the fleeing riders.

  He finally reached the revolving rifle and lifted it in both his rope-burned hands, raising it, but by then the riders had fled—all but Stillwell. The sheriff had gained his feet and was hopping on his good leg, trying to climb into his saddle and casting frantic, wide-eyed looks in the direction from which Dakota Jack’s killer had fired.

  Hunter wanted desperately to dispatch Stillwell, but the dragging had cost him most of his strength. The rifle weighed a ton in his hands, and the ground was spinning around him so quickly that he was having trouble getting the rifle’s hammer cocked back.

  Stillwell swung up into the leather, batted the heel of his good leg against the clay’s flanks, and galloped after the other men. As he did, he glanced back over his right shoulder at Hunter, as though in his haste to flee he’d suddenly realized he’d left alive the one man he’d wanted dead after all the trouble he’d gone through to kill him.

  “Next time, Buchanon!” Stillwell bellowed, then turned his head forward and galloped up and over a grassy rise.

  Hunter dropped to a knee. Then to his butt.

  “I’ll be here, Stillwell,” he yelled as loud as his pinched lungs would allow. Which was barely loud enough for he himself to hear the threat. “I’ll be here,” he repeated.

  He was sitting there, letting his marbles roll back into their rightful pockets, taking slow, deep breaths, when he heard the thud of galloping hooves. He turned his head to see a rider gallop out from behind a low, rocky scarp on the other side of the stream. Dark red hair bounced on slender shoulders clad in a red-and-black-checked shirt, beneath a brown Stetson.

  Hunter watched Annabelle splash across the creek on her buckskin. She galloped toward him, concern in her eyes.

  “Hunter!” Annabelle checked the buckskin down to a skidding halt and leaped out of the saddle. “Oh God!” She threw her arms around his neck, sobbing.

  “You must have some Scot in you,” Hunter said.

  Annabelle pulled her head away from his and ran her horrified eyes across his torn clothes and bloody, dirty, grass-covered body. “How bad?”

  “Looks worse than it feels. But, then . . .” Hunter tried a weak smile, showing his relief at seeing his girl out here, saving his bacon, which he’d thought for sure was about to be thrown to the wolves. “But, then . . . I’m not sure I can feel all of it . . . yet . . .”

  “Is anything broken?” She ran her hands down his arms, down his legs. “Can you stand?”

  “Not sure how that’s possible, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”

  A yip sounded from the trees and then Bobby Lee came scurrying out, head and tail low. The coyote ran up to Hunter and placed his front paws on his master’s knee, sniffing him and mewling.

  “I’m all right, Bobby. How are you? That mossback didn’t . . .” Hunter let his voice trail off as he found a bloody furrow across the top of the coyote’s back. “Burned you, didn’t he?”

  Bobby Lee yipped when Hunter ran his finger across the shallow gash.

  “You’ll live.” Hunter sandwiched the loyal coyote’s head in his hands and brushed his thumbs over the pricked ears. Bobby brushed his rough tongue over Hunter’s lips. “We’ll both live to fight another day, Bobby,” Hunter said. “Next time, we’ll kill that son of a bitch. Just as soon as . . .”

  Hunter turned to Annabelle and placed his dirty hand on her arm. “Pa . . . Did Doc Dahl make it to the cave?”

  Annabelle nodded. “Just after he arrived and went to work on Angus, I heard the shooting. I threw a saddle on the buckskin and . . .”

  She let her voice trail off as she stared down at the dead man.

  Hunter heaved himself to his feet, wincing and grunting at a million sundry pains both little and large. “Meet Dakota Jack.”

  Annabelle gasped, closed a hand over her mouth. “That’s Dakota Jack?” She looked at Hunter. “The killer?”

  “One an’ the same. You might’ve made yourself some money. I believe he has a hefty bounty on his head.”

  Annabelle’s cheeks turned pale as she stared down in disgust at Dakota Jack Patterson, who lay twisted on his side, a hole in his head just behind his right ear. As it had taken its leave of the killer’s head, the bullet had blown out a goodly portion of the man’s left temple. Still, Dakota Jack appeared to be smiling as he stared up past Hunter and Annabelle through heavy-lidded eyes.

  “I didn’t think I could hit him from that distance. I’ve only shot deer and antelope before.” Annabelle looked at Hunter. “Never a man.” She clutched her belly. “I think I . . . I think I might be sick.”

  “The first one’s always the hardest,” Hunter said grimly, drawing her against his side, squeezing her. “Don’t look at him anymore. He’ll just haunt your dreams, an’ he ain’t worth it.”

  Annabelle drew a deep, bracing breath and turned to Hunter. “We have to get you cleaned up.” Her eyes swept him. “You might need stitches, and we can’t be sure bones aren’t broken. I’d be surprised if they weren’t, the way that madman dragged you behind that horse!”

  “Nah,” Hunter said, turning and walking heavily, tenderly toward the stream. “All I need is a little bath in the creek. Then I’ll be ready to ride.”

  Bobby Lee dogging his heels, Hunter walked down the sloping bank. He strode out into the stream. In the middle, he turned back to face Anna standing on the bank, Bobby Lee sitting beside her, both watching Hunter with concern. He flopped backward into the water, holding his breath as the cooling creek closed over his head, at once burning and soothing his many cuts and bruises.

  Bobby Lee yipped at the sky.

  Annabelle reached down to pat the coyote’s head. “I’ll fetch Pete—I saw him on the ridge,” she said to Hunter, stepping up onto the buckskin’s back. She turned to stare off in the direction in
which Stillwell and the others had fled. “We’d best light a shuck before someone else comes.” She turned back to Hunter and shook her head. “I don’t think I can kill another man, Hunter. Even . . . even one like him.”

  “Yeah,” Hunter said, lolling in the stream’s cool, gently swirling currents. “I used to think that too.”

  * * *

  As the surge of emotion dwindled in the minutes following the confrontation with Stillwell, Dakota Jack, and the others, Hunter felt more and more like he’d been run over by a runaway freight train deadheading on a long downhill stretch of open rail with a firebox filled to its brim.

  His torn and battered body sagged in the saddle as Nasty Pete followed Annabelle and the buckskin along an old Indian trail back in the direction of the cave. Every lunge and lurch felt like a nasty wallop from a drunk and angry miner’s axe handle. He was glad indeed when he saw the cave’s dark, egg-shaped maw reveal itself at the base of the ridge as he and Annabelle surfaced from the thick pine forest beneath it.

  Bobby Lee, who had been trotting along beside Hunter, stopped suddenly, growling and showing his teeth as he stared toward the cave. Hunter stopped Nasty Pete and slid his hand toward the LeMat holstered on his right hip. Annabelle had retrieved the pistol and Shep’s Henry when she’d fetched Nasty Pete from the ridge. Hunter was glad to have both prized weapons back in his possession, where he sure as hell hoped they remained.

  “It’s Dahl,” Annabelle said, drawing the buckskin to a stop beside him.

  Hunter saw the doctor then too. Dahl was down on his knees beside the small, crackling fire at the edge of the cave, washing his hands and arms in a pot of steaming water. He looked grimly down the slope toward Hunter, Annabelle, and Bobby Lee still lifting his hackles and growling at the sawbones.

  “Stand down, Bobby. The doc’s here to help Angus.”

  Bobby Lee let his lips fall back down over his fangs but continued to give the sawbones the woolly eyeball. Bobby Lee had had his fill of strangers for one day.

  Hunter swung heavily, achingly down from his saddle. Annabelle looked up at him darkly, complicit in his dread at hearing what the doctor had to say about his father, then took Pete’s reins. “I’ll tend both mounts, Hunter. You go up and talk to the doctor.” She rose onto her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

  Hunter moved slowly up the steep grade to the cave. The doctor eyed him incredulously, raking his torn, bloody clothes and the bruises on his face with his critical gaze. “Looks like you asked the wrong wildcat to dance.”

  “Who says I did the askin’?” Hunter quipped. “How is he, Doc?”

  Dahl dried his hands and arms on a towel. “Not good. Alive but not good. Annabelle did a fair job of suturing the wound, but he was bleeding beneath the stitches.”

  “Must’ve been the ride up here.”

  “I drained the blood and infected fluid out of the wound, and cauterized it. His fever is still high. It might go higher. If it does, he’ll probably die.”

  “Isn’t there anything else you can do, Doc?”

  “No.” Dahl straightened, shaking his head. He adjusted his round, dusty spectacles on his nose. “Not out here, anyway. Maybe not even if you got him to town. Now you just need to keep bathing his face with cold water and pray, if you’re so inclined. The rest is up to God and Angus, I’m afraid. It all depends on how tough he is, how badly he wants to live.”

  “All right.”

  “I guess you’re the next Buchanon I’d better have a look at. My God, man . . .”

  “I’m all right, Doc. Just scraped and beat up some.”

  “You’d best hole up here for a while. Rest up. Both you and your father. Don’t try to move him for a couple of days, at least. And then don’t move him far, but it would be wise to get him into a clean cabin, a comfortable bed.”

  Dahl returned bottles and instruments to his medical kit and snapped his bag closed. He set his hat on his head. “I’ll be going.”

  Hunter grabbed his arm. “Doc?”

  Dahl turned back to him. “What is it?”

  “Someone must have seen us leave town together.”

  “I gathered that. Is Stillwell still alive?”

  Hunter nodded. “He might be a problem for you.”

  The doctor shook his head. “Don’t worry. Neither he nor anyone else will learn from me where you three are holed up. I won’t be responsible for more bloodshed.”

  “They could get rough.”

  “I’m the only doctor in town.” Dahl gave a cooked grin.

  Hunter returned the smile with a wooden one of his own. He turned to peer into the cave. Angus lay beneath the skins, atop the bed of spruce boughs. He looked small and frail and pasty. He looked dead. Hunter felt hollow inside. Cold.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Dahl said, “most men in his condition, having suffered the kind of wound your father suffered, would be dead by now. Even much younger men. It amazes me he’s still going. Still fighting.”

  “Not me.” Hunter turned to the doctor. “He hasn’t gotten payback yet for Shep an’ Tye.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “Ouch!”

  “Did that hurt?”

  “Of course it hurt—that’s why I said ‘ouch.’”

  “Some Rebel warrior—crying when a girl cleans a little cut on his arm. A Yankee girl, no less.” Annabelle glanced wryly up at him from under her dark red brows, then continued gently swabbing a deep gash on the underside of Hunter’s left arm.

  It was late in the afternoon, the sun tumbling westward and turning the forest below the cave dark. Hunter lay naked on a buffalo robe beside the low fire on which a pot of coffee gurgled. Angus lay nearly silent in sleep, still shivering with fever but not as violently as before. Annabelle checked on him often.

  Bobby Lee sat on the far side of the fire, watching Annabelle clean Hunter’s wounds with cool cloths and then, once she had all the sand and grass and other grit out of the bloody gashes, she smoothed arnica into them from a tin that the doctor had slipped her before he’d mounted up and ridden away.

  Hunter had minor scrapes and bruises over much of his large, heavily muscled body, but the primary cuts were the gashes on his elbows and knees, which had taken the brunt of the dragging. There were a few shallow cuts and abrasions on his cheeks and chin, as well, from the brush he’d been pulled through and from the rocks Stillwell’s horse had kicked into his face.

  “That’s more than a little cut,” Hunter corrected the girl, glancing down at the deep, long gash that she was dabbing at tenderly with a corner of her damp cloth. “And I wasn’t cryin’.” He grinned. “I don’t cry, I roar, you silly little Yankee girl.”

  She smiled up at him again, coquettishly. “Yes, I’ve heard you roar.”

  “Now you’re talkin’ dirty to me.”

  “Hush. Your father’s only a few feet away.”

  “Sound asleep.”

  “Watch that hand, sir.”

  “I’m watching it, all right.”

  Annabelle giggled and scuttled slightly sideways, away from the reach of his frisky free hand.

  “I reckon it is a rather nasty cut,” she said after a while in a mock conciliatory tone, glancing up at him again, this time her eyes cast with dark gravity. “You’re damned lucky, Hunter. So far, you’ve been lucky.”

  “Yeah, well, so has Stillwell.”

  Annabelle wrung the bloody cloth out in a tin pot, frowning at Hunter. “I thought you figured Stillwell was long gone from here. That he’d likely headed to Mexico with your gold dust.”

  “With our gold dust. I panned that for both of us—remember?” Hunter shrugged as Annabelle went back to work on the cut on his arm. “I can’t figure it. If he’s got the gold, why is he hangin’ around? He must figure revenge is worth as much or more than thirty thousand dollars. Maybe that’s what his pride is worth to him.”

  “Maybe it’s not him who has the gold.”

  “If not him—who?” Hunter looked at her, p
ensive. She continued to dab the cloth at the cut, pressing the tip of her tongue to the underside of her rich upper lip in concentration.

  She looked up at Hunter. “Remember how Bobby Lee was acting the day you first showed me the gold?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Someone must have followed us out from town. I doubt it was Stillwell. He was probably still licking his wounds . . . his injured pride.” She frowned, shook her head. “Someone else . . .”

  Hunter thought about that.

  Finally, he said, “Nah, it was him, all right. He’s got the gold. Before I kill him, I’m gonna find out where he hid it. He probably buried it somewhere outside Tigerville, close to town.”

  Annabelle set the cloth aside and then picked up the arnica tin. “That gold isn’t going to do us much good if we’re dead.”

  “It’s not gonna do us much good if we’re not free to spend it either.”

  Annabelle gently rubbed the arnica into Hunter’s cut. She didn’t say anything for over a full minute. Then she looked up at him again, gravely, and said, “Maybe it’s time we pull foot. After Angus is well enough to move, I mean.”

  “We’ve talked about this, honey.”

  Annabelle pressed the lid onto the arnica tin and set it aside. She set her hand on Hunter’s flat washboard belly and ran it up his broad chest, through the light blond hair nestled in the valley between his broad pectorals.

  She rested it gently on the side of his face. “Hunter, you’re at war with a whole army of men. Stillwell’s going to go back to town and bring back more. More and more. We can’t last out here. We have provisions for only a few more days.”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll go hunting.”

  “A shot might be heard.”

  “I have other ways to hunt.”

  “My point is, Hunter—when are you going to have accounted for enough?”

  “When I get the last man who burned our ranch.” Hunter placed his hands on her shoulders and looked at her directly. “I didn’t start this war, Anna. But like we both said before, we’re damn well gonna finish it!”