Black Hills (9781101559116)

by Thompson, Rod

  Sometimes people took new names or were given new names because of where they were from, some action they had taken, or something that happened to them—names like Buckshot, Roper, One-Eye, Peg-Leg, Lucky, Digger, Jingles, and many others. A few had tried calling him Dakota, but it didn’t stick. The foreman of the Bar-M in Montana liked to hang nicknames on hands and tried calling Cormac the Dakota Kid. That was silly, Cormac thought, but at the same time, kind of fun; but it didn’t stick, and he was relieved when it stopped. What people called themselves, or what their past had been, was unimportant. People were judged and accepted, or avoided, by what proved to be their integrity, or lack thereof.

  Most were decent, hardworking folks, though some were troublemakers: lazy and trying to ride on the backs of others, doing as little as possible. Some couldn’t get along with the people “back East” and moved “out West” to find a better grade of people, only to find that it wasn’t the other people that were the problem. Wherever they went, their problems traveled right along with them, and then there were always the crooks, outlaws, and con artists looking for folks gullible enough to be scammed.

  The western movement had created a new language, a new dialect his mother would have called it. Like most westerners, Cormac’s vocabulary and speech patterns had changed dramatically from his mother’s teachings. He had taken on the western dialect of y’alls, howdies, and the like. It was hard not to, and most people coming west flowed into the new language quick enough. A New York lady’s “she is such a sweet little girl,” and an ex-Ozarkian’s “at ole gurl is a sweetern,” would become a cowboy’s “she’s a right sweet little thing.”

  Some of his job changes followed gunplay. Most of the time, however, the changes were due to restlessness, a desire to see more country maybe, or in hopes of finding a place where he would be contented for more than a month or two. He was tired of moving around, but he just didn’t know how to stay put or why he couldn’t stay happy anywhere. He had had some good jobs and some good bosses, and made some good friends, yet every time, after a few months, he always began to realize that he wasn’t really happy wherever it was that he was and he would leave.

  A couple times friends had suggested he just needed to meet a good woman, and he had had several chances. He had spent time with some pretty girls on rides and picnics and such, and once, in a town in which he had briefly stopped, he bought a box lunch at an auction sale primarily because the girl that had made it was rather plain looking and her lunch wasn’t attracting any decent bids. He bid two dollars, the highest of all the bids that day, and made a big show of taking her arm and leading her to find a nice place to eat it.

  Her lunch was very good, he spent the entire afternoon with her and enjoyed her company more than most, but there was no special spark between them.

  He continued to traipse from place to place. Unfortunately, at the same time, Cormac Lynch was gaining a reputation as a man to fight shy of as word got around that he was that gunfighter from the Dakota Territory. And on a few occasions, he had been called out as Mackle. In either case, it wasn’t a label he wanted, it just sort of settled on him, like a heavy blanket.

  Hard labor had filled out his arms and shoulders and he refused to be put down or disrespected for any reason. If someone wanted trouble, they got it; he backed down from no man. He had learned about fighting from the Swede and he learned how the first punch in many fights is the winning punch.

  If it was gunplay they wanted, they got that too. Coming out the winner in two or three gunfights was all it took to earn the name of gunfighter. Some glory-seekers, like the fool kid from Virginia City, search out gunfighters with the dimwitted scheme of making themselves a name. Most merely end up learning what the underside of grass looks like.

  Cormac left Texas as ramrod on a cattle drive to Kansas for the Ocean 3, a ranch started by three ex-sailors who had pooled their money to buy a herd of cattle and a little land, then claimed grazing rights to four times as much as they had purchased, and like most large ranchers in their day, claimed any unbranded cattle that came their way. They knew nothing about ranching but weren’t afraid of hard work and had been smart enough to hire people who did. Their brand was a long wavy line followed by a number three.

  “The long line makes the brand more difficult to be worked over by a runnin’ iron,” they told Cormac. It had proven to be a good idea. Their losses to rustlers being fewer than most, their herd had tripled in size quickly, and it was time to take some profit. Their foreman at the time, it had fallen to Cormac to take a herd to the cattle buyers in Kansas to be shipped by train to eastern markets. Cormac’s bosses were Kalen Brockmore, Jedediah McLeary, and Tom Bossen. Tom had been a bosn’s mate on their last ship. Cormac had no idea what a bosn’s mate’s responsibilities were, but he thought it a fine play on words. His pa would have made something up about a Bossen bein’ a bosn’ but he wasn’t his pa and didn’t have his gift of gab, or his way with words. They were all good men: strong men. Cormac got along best with Tom, so it just sort of worked out natural like, that most orders were directed through him. They were all there on this morning.

  “There have been reports of a large band of outlaws about thirty or forty strong stealing herds and selling them in Mexico. The last was about a month ago.” Tom Bossen paused. Come on, out with it, Cormac thought. He knew there was more. “Mack, they always kill all the riders.”

  Tom was doing the talking. Under cover of stopping for a dip of snuff, he paused to let that sink in. “There’s also an Indian raiding party scalping and raping their way this direction that you’ll need to keep an eye out for. You will likely have trouble before you get to Kansas, but we’re counting on you to get the herd through.”

  Cormac looked at Kalen; he was itchin’ to say something. He looked at Jedediah, and Jedediah nodded for him to speak his mind.

  “We’ve waited as long as we could to give the beef a chance to fatten up. We have also been hoping to get word that the outlaws had been stopped, but we can’t afford to wait any longer. Keep it under your hat, but we need the money. As you well know, this is our first profit herd, and we’re stretched almighty thin. If we lose this herd, we’ll be back to starting over.”

  Because of his height, it wasn’t necessary for Cormac to look up to many men, but Kalen was such a man. Standing three or four inches above Cormac’s six foot four, it was necessary.

  “We’re going to pay a bonus; we want the boys one hundred percent behind you. One dollar per head will be put into a pot for you and the boys to split when you get through. That should get their attention.”

  He was certainly right about that.

  “A dollar a head?” Red exploded when Cormac told them around the supper fire the first night out. “Good God, man! That’s three thousand dollars.”

  Red was Cormac’s unofficial second-in-command. A skinny, freckle-faced Irishman, he had to wear suspenders to keep his pants up. His accent made Cormac think of Lainey. He was older than the others but would never say by how much. He was generally thought to be around fifty, old for a puncher. Slender, older, and he had a taste for Irish whiskey, but he was like a little banty rooster; he’d fight at the drop of a hat . . . and sometimes be the one to drop the hat, or knock the chip off some shoulder. Everybody took to him.

  “The bosses don’t have to worry none,” Red added, “for three thousand dollars, we’d run the devil out of hell and take this herd right through the middle, flames and all.”

  Everybody yelled in agreement.

  Cormac looked around at the group. They were eighteen strong and, other than himself, Red, and Cookie, none were over twenty-two; half had a year or two to go before they would see twenty, and two were even younger. That was the normal lot for cowboys. Boys became men quickly, wanting to pull their own weight. Most were working alongside their parents on farms and ranches before their sixteenth birthday, as he had, or out on their own if they had no parents, or couldn’t get along with the ones they did have. Boys
back east were still going to school, rolling hoops and wearing knickers, but in the West, kids did a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.

  “Three thousand dollars! ‘Land a Goshen,’ my pa would have said,” spouted Mickey, their wrangler, another Irishman. “There are eighteen of us, counting Mack. How much is that? Anybody know how to figure it?”

  Cormac’s mother had been teaching him numbers and what to do with them, but sometimes they just refused to cooperate. Cormac had just started to work it out when the kid came up with it. Every ranch had one they called the kid. In this case, Indians had wiped out his family, along with forty-seven other people on the same wagon train. He had survived because, just before the attack, he had walked away from the train to take a bush-break. He had heard the shots and yelling and recognized it for what it was, and being no dunderhead and knowing there was nothing he could do about it, he hid. Now, just a half a year over thirteen, he was big for his age and trying to prove himself. He was the first one about whenever there was work needing doin’.

  “That’s a hundred and sixty-six dollars each,” he gushed. “Man, oh man, oh man, oh man, Mack! That’s over a year’s wages.” Ten dollars a month and found was the usual wage for a cowhand. As segundo, Cormac made twenty.

  Their Scandinavian, Oley, usually spoke little. In a voice heavy with accent, he said “Yah, idt souns goodt. Vhen I get mine I’m heading for Denver. There is this leetle gorl vorking there that’s so purty it hurts your eyes yuust to loook at her,’specially vhen she’s all gussied up. I tin’ she need soambody like me.”

  “You Scandihoovian Yahoo,” called Mickey, imitating Oley’s accent from the other side of the fire. “You’re full of prune juice. You tink all the pretty girls need soambody like yoooh.”

  They all laughed, and the rest of the night passed with stories of how the money would be spent—if they made it. If they did, Cormac might break down and buy the new saddle he had his eye on in Denver, but the rest of his share would go to the bank there. The frugal habits of his farmer-parents were a comfortable fit and a fond memory.

  He didn’t much keep track of how much he had, but it should be sneaking up on a tidy sum. What with gunslingers looking for him as Mack Lynch, or Mackle, and Indians trying to catch Two Horse, Lainey would probably end up with it anyway. Sometimes, when he awoke in the night, he would start thinking about her and not be able to get back to sleep, wondering how she was, or if she married. That she was pretty was a given, but she was also a warm and nice person. He didn’t know the words to describe her voice but he remembered enjoying the musical sound of her Irish lilt, and their ride to town in the back of the sled with blankets over them . . . and how he had felt with her head on his shoulder. The smell of her hair was strong in his mind.

  He thought of the time when he was sixteen and had used a mirror to peek under the blanket dividing their bedroom one warm summer night when they were getting ready for bed. She had just finished getting undressed but hadn’t yet got her nightgown on, and he remembered how guilty it had made him feel. He never repeated the incident. He remembered feeling guilty, but remembering the way she looked made him smile in the darkness. He also remembered it had been well worth it. He could live with the guilt. Unhappily, those kinds of thoughts always led to the memories of the hatred in her eyes, and the disgust in her voice. Damn it to hell!

  Occasionally, Cormac couldn’t help thinking about how things might have been if what had happened hadn’t, but that was wishful, wasteful thinkin’. He had since met a few girls who smiled a little too wide, laughed at his jokes a little too loudly, or put a little extra swing in their hips; a couple even made a bold suggestion or two—girls that were easy on the eyes and fun to talk to, but of no real interest. He never sampled any of their pleasures. He just wasn’t interested in them. Laurie Haplander had generated the most interest, but even she had come out on the short end of the stick when compared to Lainey.

  Just as well, he had gotten too rough around the edges to be any good to a woman. The ones who had set their cap for him and flirted with him would have lost interest soon enough. When he had left the farm, he had realized the making of himself was to be in his own hands. What had he made of himself? He drank some, smoked some, sometimes chewed tobacco or dipped snuff, and backed away from no man.

  All in all, Cormac felt safe in saying that he was not husband material, but he was satisfied with the type of man he had made of himself. He felt himself to be honest, hard workin’, and God fearin’, but he couldn’t say he had accomplished much to speak of. Others his age had started ranches, farms, or a business in town by his age. It seemed that he was just wandering.

  No, there was no use in him thinking settling-down thoughts about Lainey, or any woman—especially Lainey. Although, he had heard it said that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, he never really understood it. All of a sudden, it made sense.

  Cormac listened to his men’s plans to spend their windfall and laughed along with them and cleaned his guns. He would wear a third gun tucked in his waist until they got to Kansas. He hoped they would not be needed, but he believed what his pa had tried to get his mother to accept and which she so tragically found out too late: one must be prepared. Sometimes when a gun is needed, it is needed right then, and five seconds later is just too darned late.

  He remained motionless as his mind went back to that terrible day. The mental pictures formed in his mind and tears welled up in his eyes, and the inside of his nose took on a strange crinkling sensation until he realized the voices around him were silent and the men were watching him. He still couldn’t think about it and, as always, pushed it down and shook it off.

  “Just daydreamin’ what I’m goin’ to do with my share,” he told them.

  They all laughed at his guns and belts, with one being brown and one being black and one pistol longer than the other, but when Cormac stood up and strapped them both on, the laughter stopped. He had told the men about the rustlers; the guns brought it home. They knew the damage he could do with those guns, and if he was taking the threat seriously, they would do well to follow his lead. It finally sunk in . . . some of them might not get to Kansas.

  They would be following the same Goodnight-Loving Trail upon which Oliver Loving had been killed by Comanches in’67. It ran across the arid and lonely untamed vastness of sun-blasted Texas, up through Colorado and into Wyoming. They would follow it across an unpeopled portion of Texas before cutting off for Dodge City on a route that had been described to Cormac by a puncher using lines drawn in the dirt beside a campfire. It might skirt the area the rustlers seemed to favor.

  The first day they made but ten miles. Three thousand head of cattle stretched out to nearly a mile. Looking down at them from a hilltop, they looked for all like a giant snake weaving its way through the irregular countryside.

  Oley was working point and Mickey running drag with their remuda. The bosses had made sure there were plenty of spare horses—they were going to be needed. Red alone would go through five or six a day; he was everywhere, checking on point and drag, directing the others and running back cattle that tried to head out on their own. Cormac intended on doing all the scouting; if there was skullduggery afoot, he was going to find it.

  Buntline’s book was silly, but it did have a few entertaining moments and only cost a dime, which, in Cormac’s opinion, was eleven cents more than it was worth, but it had added a few words to his vocabulary, skullduggery being one of them. The word was probably made up by some inventive writer somewhere that didn’t get out much. But, was there any skullduggin’ to be done, he would be the one doing it.

  They suffered the heat and longed for the coolness of the evenings. To give Lop Ear and Horse some rest, Cormac would use another mount here and there, but he wanted his own horses for scouting. If it became necessary to get someplace—or away from someplace—in a hurry, Cormac wanted a horse between his legs with plenty of speed and bottom. In simple terms, when the chips were down
and hell was exploding, he wanted to be sittin’ right smack in the middle of either Lop Ear or Horse.

  By the end of the week, they had settled into a routine and were making twelve to fourteen miles per day, and by the end of the fifth week were on the verge of passing out of Texas, when it began to rain. Most days were real scorchers; the rain was more than welcome. They had been a day and a half without water, and Cormac thought his mouth was so dry he coulda spit cotton. A few days break from the heat would be enjoyed.

  Whenever possible, he stopped the herd at night in flat areas with surrounding hills to help hold it, and to make watching easier from one of the hilltops on nights with enough moonlight. On one such night with a full and bright moon overhead and too many things on his mind to sleep, he elected to take advantage of the good weather to carefully clean his saddle and holsters with his pa’s leather balm and finished by cleaning his guns. Although he had just cleaned them a couple days earlier, too often was better than too seldom. He began scouting early the next morning, and just before dawn found a few cigarette butts and the tracks of two riders.

  They were being scouted . . . from then on no more cow-ponies, he would only ride Lop Ear or Horse.

  After lunch, the rains started. Looking up above the sky, Cormac commented, “Very funny. Ha-ha! You wait until I get my saddle nice and clean and then you rain on it.”

  But as long as he was doing it, God was making no halfway job of it. It started right off with large drops, and quickly turned into a downpour, severely lashing the countryside. There would be no skullduggin’ goin’ on in this storm.

  Cookie put up a tarp over his kitchen and kept two pots of coffee going constantly. “Looks like we got us a real gulley washer, Mack,” he said.

  The occasional lightning flashes out of the rain-whipped darkness were making the herd restless; everyone was in the saddle. The punchers talked to the herd and sang to them and hollered friendly insults at each other about how bad their voices were and kept making friendly sounds in general to keep the herd distracted from the weather.