Annabelle swallowed, kept her tone low and controlled. “When . . . and if . . . you get that last man, more will come. More men like Dakota Jack Patterson. You’re the lone Confederate out here, Hunter. Against a whole passel of Yankees who stick together.”
She paused, licked her lips, then leaned closer to him, pressing her face up close to his, a deeply worried, anguished look carving deep lines across her forehead and around her eyes.
“These hills can never be our home now,” she said. “Not after all this bloodshed. We can never live here in peace. We can never raise a family here in peace. My father won’t allow it. He’s a very powerful man with deep pockets. If you kill the men he will eventually send, he’ll hire more . . . send more. He’ll kill you and Angus and he’ll drag me back to that house of his, which will be condemning me to a living hell.”
Annabelle looked down for a time, pondering.
Slowly, she raised her gaze once more to his. The worry and anguish was suddenly gone.
Now the lines were gone from her forehead, and her eyes were flinty with resolve. “But if this is what you want . . . if war is what you want . . . revenge for your brothers . . . I will fight beside you. We’ll fight until we’re out of food and water and bullets and too many men come for us to fight them off any longer—and then we will die together. We’ll die fighting. Together.”
Hunter stared at her for a long time, his thoughts racing.
Finally, he let his hands slide from her arms, and he leaned back on his hands. “Ah, hell.”
“What is it?” she asked quietly.
“It’s hopeless.” He turned away. Suddenly, it was all coming clear. He turned back to her. “You’re right, Anna. They’ll just keep throwing more and more men at me—bounty hunters, lawmen—until I’m dead. Until we’re both dead. There’s no point to it. No point to more killing . . . dying. As for the gold—well, it’s just gold. If Stillwell wants it so bad, let him have it.”
He paused, glanced toward where Angus lay on his makeshift pallet, mumbling in his sleep.
“As soon as Pa is out of the woods, we’ll pull our picket pins. We’ll shilly-shally on out of these hills. I don’t know where we’ll go or what we’ll do, but living is better than dying. Better than killing. I knew that once. I guess it just took more killing to make me learn the lesson all over again. I guess it took you. I hope it’s the last time I have to learn it.”
“Oh, Hunter.”
Annabelle lay her head upon his chest. “We’ll make do,” she said, pressing her lips to his chest. “Wherever we go, we’ll make do. We’ll have each other, we’ll have your father, and that will be enough.”
“It will be more than enough.” Hunter kissed the top of her head but slid a worried glance at Angus. “Keep kickin’, you old Rebel.”
He lay back against the pallet. Aside from his concern for Angus, he felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
* * *
Frank Stillwell reined his horse up in front of the Dakota Territorial Hotel in Tigerville, where the horses of the other five surviving members of his party were already standing, heads hanging, tails switching at flies.
Those men were Dakota Jack’s two partners Weed Zorn and Klaus Steinbach, as well as three close friends of Pee-Wee Chaney—Mort Rucker, Henry Kleinsasser, and Bill Williams. Stillwell had seen Rucker, Kleinsasser, and Williams in the Territorial earlier that morning, just after he’d spied the doctor leaving town with Hunter Buchanon, and had invited them to throw in. “The more the merrier.”
Besides, Graham Ludlow was offering a sizable bounty on Buchanon’s head as well as for the man’s daughter, though only if she was brought back to him alive.
Rucker, Kleinsasser, and Williams were fighting men who often worked for area ranchers “resolving” range disputes. They’d ridden along with Stillwell this morning for the challenge of a good fight as well as to exact payment for the killing of Max and Luke Chaney.
Now, however, all three men as well as even such hardened killers as Weed Zorn and Klaus Steinbach had seemed to have had a little starch taken out of their drawers by the killing of such a formidable regulator as the legendary Dakota Jack Patterson. On the way back to Tigerville, they’d ridden on ahead of Stillwell, who’d taken it slow due to the nasty bruise and cut his right leg had suffered when his horse had fallen on top of it.
He wasn’t sure if the leg was broken, but it had definitely incurred a nasty gash from a pointed rock that needed tending.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, however, with the doctor likely still running hog-wild around the hills with none other than Stillwell’s worst enemy, Hunter Buchanon. First things first. He needed whiskey. And maybe Jane was still up in his room feeling sorry for herself from his having had to bring her under rein earlier. He’d have her clean it up and bandage it for him. He’d ply her with good whiskey, promise to buy her something special when all this damnable dust had settled.
Stillwell stepped gingerly down from his horse.
“What happened to your leg, Sheriff?”
Stillwell turned to the young boy sitting on the Territorial’s broad front steps. The kid wore a watch cap and knickers. He was drawing in the dirt at the bottom of the steps with a forked stick.
Stillwell had seen him around town before. A strumpet’s bangtail. He made pocket change by running sundry errands and building fires for crippled widows and doxies down with the clap.
Indignant rage welled up in Stillwell. “None of your damn business, boy!”
“Sorry, Sheriff.”
“Take my horse over to the livery barn. Give him a good rubdown.”
The boy cast away his stick and rose from the step, dirty little hand extended. “It’s gonna cost ya.”
“What?” Most of the fatherless urchins around town had always run Stillwell’s errands for free. Their payment had simply been the honor of running an errand for the highly respected . . . and feared . . . sheriff of Pennington County.
Stillwell considered backhanding the kid. But then he looked around. There were too many other people on the street, a good many staring his way, likely wondering, as the kid was, about his leg.
Grumbling, Stillwell dug into a pocket of his whipcord trousers and pulled out a coin. He flipped the nickel to the kid, who caught it expertly out of the air. He looked at it, muttered with some disappointment, “This’ll do . . . I reckon.”
He grabbed the clay’s reins and led it off in the direction of the livery barn. Supporting himself on the step rail, Stillwell watched the kid tramp northward along the street. He caught several snide glances tossed his way by passersby. By men who’d once respected and feared him.
The only way to get that respect and fear back where it belonged was to drag Hunter Buchanon to town and hang him from the cottonwood. By God, he would do that if it was the last thing he ever did. He would leave the body to hang there until the crows had devoured all but the bones. Then he’d let the bones hang there until the sinews between them became so brittle they fell one by one into the street to be carried away by stray curs.
Somehow, he had to locate the man’s hideout.
Stillwell cursed and made his slow, plodding way up the hotel steps. He stumbled through the lobby, ignoring the skeptical glance of the old lady, Mrs. Merriman, manning the front desk. He stumbled through the arched open doorway and into the saloon. The men he’d ridden into town with were all standing at the bar, throwing back bracing shots of whiskey backed by frothy schooners of Angus Buchanon’s ale.
Pee-Wee Chaney sat alone at a round table between the entrance and the bar. None other than Stillwell’s dear Jane was crouched over Pee-Wee, extending a balled cloth to the man, whose face resembled freshly ground beef. A whiskey bottle stood on the table in front of the big Pee-Wee, whose hamlike left fist was wrapped around it.
“Hold this against your face, Pee-Wee,” Jane was saying to the man. “It’s a poultice of fresh mint and mud. Should bring the swel
ling down for . . .” Jane’s gaze had drifted over to Stillwell.
Stillwell winced when he saw her face straight on. A corner of her mouth was badly swollen, as was her left eye. The eye, the color of a ripe plum, was swollen nearly closed. All the color drained out of her face as she squatted there, glaring back toward Stillwell standing in the doorway.
“There’s my girl,” the sheriff said, sheepishly clearing his throat and limping forward. “Bring me a bottle of the good stuff, will you, darlin’?”
All eyes were on Stillwell now, including those of the men who’d ridden out to hunt Buchanon with him. The day barman, Hank Mitchum, was glaring at him, hard jawed. Obviously, they knew who’d performed the handiwork on Jane Campbell’s face.
Jane didn’t say anything for a couple of beats. Then, crisply, obviously more than a little miffed—which Stillwell couldn’t blame her for one bit—she said, “Sure, sure. A bottle of the good stuff. Coming right up, Sheriff.”
She stood up, swung around, and marched over to the bar.
Feeling sheepish, Stillwell headed to a table near Pee-Wee and slumped into a chair. Pee-Wee was the only one in the bar not looking at Stillwell. Obviously, Pee-Wee was in more than a little misery. He sat slumped in his chair, staring down at the table, tipping his head back now and then to pour whiskey into his mouth without letting the bottle touch his lips.
His greasy, straight brown hair hung straight down to his shoulders.
“What happened to you?” Stillwell asked him.
Pee-Wee turned to him. Again, Stillwell winced.
The man’s face was a swollen purple mask. His nose appeared to have tripled in size, and turned an especially sickly shade of yellow. It appeared to be trying to take over his entire swollen face. Both of Pee-Wee’s eyes were black, and his lips were crusted with dried blood.
Pee-Wee stared dumbly at Stillwell for a full ten seconds, then curled his upper lip enough to reveal the bloody stubs of several broken teeth. Then he turned his head forward again, tipped it back, and poured more whiskey into his mouth.
Brisk footsteps sounded. Stillwell turned toward the bar out from behind which Jane was striding. She held a bottle in one hand a glass in the other hand.
Stillwell smiled. Just thinking about that whiskey soothed his aching leg. He didn’t, however, care for the bitterness betrayed by Jane’s dark, flat eyes and the pasty pallor of her cheeks. He liked it even less when she stopped about seven feet from the bar, just beyond Pee-Wee, and held the bottle up above her head and twisted her face into a specter-like grin.
“Want the whiskey, Sheriff?” she asked in a pinched, bizarre-sounding, singsong voice. “Come an’ get it!”
CHAPTER 35
The men at the bar turned to face Stillwell. Klaus Steinbach elbowed Weed Zorn, chuckling. Zorn grinned as he slid his gaze from Jane to Stillwell then back again, and chuckled once more.
Even Pee-Wee took the trouble to turn his head and swollen, drink-bleary eyes to the sheriff.
Everyone probably saw the crimson flush in Stillwell’s burning cheeks. He could feel a vein throbbing in his temple.
“Here’s your whiskey, Sheriff,” Jane chortled, wagging the bottle above her head. “Come an’ get it!”
The men at the bar chuckled. All except the bartender, Hank Mitchum. Mitchum stared in exasperation at the saloon girl, who had surely lost her sanity.
“Jane!” Mitchum admonished.
“Jane,” Stillwell said tightly, every bone and muscle in his body drawn with painful rigidity. “Bring . . . me . . . that . . . blasted . . . bottle.”
“You want it? Come an’ get it!”
“Jane!” both Stillwell and Mitchum croaked at nearly the same time again, the bartender digging his pudgy fingers into the edge of his mahogany bar top. At the bar, Mort Rucker and Henry Kleinsasser shared a sidelong grin. Williams ran a hand down his face, laughing.
“Sure,” Stillwell croaked, wincing as he slid his chair too quickly back in rage that was quickly becoming an explosive boil. “Sure . . . sure . . . I’ll fetch the bottle, you three-penny whore!”
He fairly leaped to his feet, no longer feeling the raw pain in his leg. Barely limping, he strode around his table, and, jaws set hard, clenching his fists at his sides, he made a beeline for the saloon girl grinning before him, still wagging the whiskey bottle above her head.
When Stillwell was halfway between his table and Jane, he stopped suddenly. Just then he saw the gutta-percha grips of a silver-chased, over-and-under derringer peeking up from the saloon’s girl’s cleavage exposed by the bodice of her frilly, skimpy red dress.
The devilish grin slowly left Jane’s face. Her eyes hardened even more. Her right hand opened. The bottle fell to the floor to shatter, whiskey and glass flying in all directions. Jane’s swollen lips formed a narrow line across the lower half of her face, and a flush now rose in her cheeks as she dropped her hand to her corset. She pulled out the derringer, clicking the hammer back.
“Here’s what you really deserve, you sick toad strangler!” Jane screamed as she raised the pretty little popper cheek high and narrowed one eye, aiming down the stout double barrels.
“No!” Stillwell screamed, throwing up both hands palms out, tipping his head backward and to one side and screwing up his face as he squeezed his eyes closed.
The derringer made a menacing little pop that sounded hardly louder than that made by a snapped twig. Stillwell’s left hand went numb.
“Jane!” Mitchum bellowed from behind the bar.
Smelling cordite wafting on the saloon’s still air, Stillwell looked up to see blood running down the back of his still upraised, quivering left hand. The bullet had gone through the hand, opening a hole filled with blood, raw meat, and daylight in its exact center.
Stillwell pulled his hand down, howling and clutching the wounded limb with his right. He glared up at Jane, who gave a ferocious, animal-like scream as she pulled the derringer back, holding it with both hands as she cocked it again, engaging the second barrel.
Stillwell wheeled, his old enemy fear running off its leash inside him again.
“No!” he heard someone scream in a high, screeching wail. As he ran toward the front of the saloon, he realized with a thundering humiliation that the screamer had been none other than himself.
“Jane, no!” he screamed again, as though there were an impostor inside him, one that keenly new fear and wasn’t afraid to express it.
He stopped and glanced behind him.
Jane was striding toward him, laughing, aiming the derringer straight out from her right shoulder, shifting the gun slightly from side to side and up and down, drawing a bead on him.
“Jane, no!”
Stillwell twisted around and threw himself into the big plate-glass window at the front of the room. The pop of the derringer was nearly drowned by the raucous shattering of glass. Stillwell flew through the window frame, through the rain of breaking glass, and landed on his back on the wooden floor of the veranda fronting the hotel.
He lay there for a time in shock, gasping like a landed fish. Dimly, gradually, he became aware again of the throbbing, burning pain in his left hand. By comparison, it made the ache in his leg little more noticeable than the bite of a fly.
Stillwell looked around. People on the street had stopped to stare at him. Even a couple of horseback riders trotting past the hotel now stopped their mounts, one nudging the other and then pointing out the sheriff lying on the veranda in a small sea of broken glass. A couple of dirty-faced street urchins peeked through the veranda rails at him.
The street had fallen silent. There was only the monotonous thumping of the stamping mill up at the King Solomon.
Stillwell’s humiliation was now becoming the kindling building a fire of unbridled fury.
Again, that vein throbbed in his temple.
Ignoring the bites of the broken glass and the pain in his hand, he climbed to his feet. He stood and peered through the broken window.
Jane stood ten feet away, smiling at him victoriously, gray smoke curling from the barrels of the derringer where she held the little pistol down low by her right side, at the hem of her short skirt. Stillwell glared through the broken window at her.
Gradually, the smile left her battered face.
It was as though Stillwell himself was sucking the humor out of her, causing her lips to return to a straight if lumpy line across the bottom half of her face. His left hand bled against his left pants leg. He lifted his right hand and closed it around the grips of the .44 holstered on his hip.
Cold fear sparked in Jane’s eyes.
“Bitch.” Stillwell slid the long-barreled, ivory-gripped Peacemaker free from its holster and, holding it down along his left leg, he clicked the hammer back.
Jane screamed, “No, Frank!”
She whipped around and ran back through the saloon, toward Pee-Wee and the men standing at the bar.
Stillwell raised the Colt, extended it straight out from his right shoulder, narrowed his right eye as he aimed down the barrel, and fired.
Jane screamed. Not because she’d been hit. Just terrified. The bullet had been fired just wide of her head on purpose. It plunked into the egg-shaped ball atop the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
Stillwell smiled. He stepped back through the window frame and began moving quickly across the room, following Jane’s route toward the bar. He stopped, fired again, evoking another scream as Jane tripped over Stillwell’s own chair sitting at an angle to his table, which he’d fired his second bullet into.
She hit the floor and rolled.
“Jesus, Frank,” bellowed Hank Mitchum. “Stop it!”
Stillwell continued striding forward, wincing a little against the pain in his hand and leg. Jane scrambled to her feet, crying, moaning, and took off running again toward the stairs. The men at the bar were all crouching low, well aware that Stillwell’s lead was being flung in their direction.
Jane ran around Pee-Wee, screaming, “Help me! Make him stop! Help me!”
She ran to where Klaus Steinbach stood crouched before the bar, both hands gripping the bar top behind him, ready to dodge the next bullet. Jane ran up beside him and tried to tuck herself behind him, between him and the bar, clutching his arm and yelling, “Help me! Please, don’t let him kill me!”
The Black Hills Page 28
