Black Hills (9781101559116) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  AFTERWORD

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2011 by Rod Thompson.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / December 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Thompson, Rod, (date-)

  The Black Hills / Rod Thompson.—Berkley trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55911-6

  1. Young men—West (U.S.)—Fiction. 2. Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction. 3. Outlaws—Fiction. 4. Violence—Fiction. 5. Retribution—Fiction. 6. Black Hills (S.D. and Wyo.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3620.H6875B53 2011

  813’.6—dc22

  2011016474

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To God for my talent, if such I have.

  To Sherry, Karen, and Shawn for their encouragement and support.

  To my daughter, Rhonda Jo Thompson, for her love, encouragement, undying support, and many hours of bleary-eyed editing.

  To D & S.

  And to Joanne, my hero, my first editor, my gambling partner, my pretty lady, my friend, my wife, and forever love: forever gone.

  ACKNOWLEDGMETS

  As this story would have never seen the light of day without the efforts of an amazing agent, Peter Riva, and the most patient editor on the planet, Faith Black of Berkley Books, I give them my heartfelt thank-you.

  CHAPTER 1

  The four riders coming over the hills escaped Cormac Lynch’s normally acute awareness of his surroundings. His attention was on his burlap potato sack. He dragged it to the beginning of the next row, straddled it, and then hooked the top of the mouth on his belt. As he walked straddle-legged, the sack flowed between his legs while the mouth was held open by a piece of thin cord tying each side of the bag to his knees, allowing the body of the sack to drag behind him.

  The briskness in the air was exhilarating and the morning sun warm as it accepted its task of chasing away the morning shadows and burning the dew from the potato plants and grasses. Bobolinks flying in and out of the lone tree standing near the field were singing and flirting with each other. It was a great day to be alive. There was a long day of work ahead, but that’s what farmers did from first light till the sun went down; he was up to it.

  After plowing up the potatoes and spreading them across the ground for easy pickin’, his father had already ridden the mile to the cornfield on the other side of the farm buildings shortly after dawn to begin weeding. Cormac loved working beside his pa, but hated weeding and was glad his mother had wanted him to help finish picking the potatoes. Their main crops were corn, wheat, and flax, but his mother had decided to put in a small field of potatoes to sell in town for what she called pin money.

  Cormac checked the progress of his mother and sister, who had started picking while he had removed the saddles and bridles and hobbled the saddle horses to allow them to graze without running off. Most farm horses were plow horses, strong, powerful, and suitable for the hard work that was expected of them: pulling heavy hay racks and wagons piled high, frequently to overflowing, with grain or corn; or pulling a plow to break up hardened soil; or pulling stone boats for relocating boulders and full water barrels for irrigation; or tearing stubborn tree stumps from the earth in which they had grown. Usually ridden bareback when used for transportation purposes while en route to the fields in full harness, but when Cormac’s mother was along, his pa insisted saddles be used. Today was such a day, and the care of the horses fell to Cormac.

  Four years older, his sister Becky was nigh on to eighteen and their mother only twice that. Like most western women of the time, she had married young, having Becky one year later. People frequently said they looked more like sisters than mother and daughter, which pleased them both no end. They fairly beamed every time they heard it. Becky loved being compared to her mother, whom she thought was surely the prettiest woman in the world, and her mother loved being told that she looked young enough to be Becky’s sister.

  Both experienced pickers, strong from many hours of hard work, they had a good head start on Cormac. He smiled as he noticed his mother glance over her shoulder to check on him and then murmur something to Becky. They had played this game before. His father was a kind but firm taskmaster; his mother, on the other hand, always found ways to turn work into fun. Now, knowing that he did not like being behind them and would want to catch up, she and Becky were going to try to prevent it.

  “We’ll see about that,” he said softly. “We’ll just see about that.” He had been studying and preparing for just such an event with frequent, thoughtful practice on how to make his hands move faster and pick more potatoes in less time. He had experimented with various fingering grips on the potatoes, different strokes and alternate flips to get the potatoes into the bag. Each change produced tiny amounts of progress, and each bit of progress took him a little closer to his goal: to be the fastest potato picker in the territory.

  While picking in the field, and often at night before falling asleep, he indulged himself in a fantasy. In it, he could see himself i
n the middle of a long line of boys lined up in contest at one end of a huge potato field, each with their own row. He watched as all bent over into tater-pickin’ position and made ready, and then bang! A gunshot started the race to the other end of the field.

  Although his competitors were always bigger, older, more experienced, and somehow always managing to get a head start and make him begin the race with the others well in front, they always proved to be no match for his intense concentration and the great swiftness with which the potatoes flew into his bag. Cormac was always the first to turn around, laughing, at the other end of the field.

  Now the time was here. This was the great race of his life. This was the moment he had prepared for. His competitors had joined forces against him and were already well in the lead. “We’ll see about that,” he said again. “We’ll just see about that.” Then Cormac Lynch, the greatest potato picker of all time, bent and began to pick potatoes. He had his mother’s light touch and agility with a natural quickness of movement enhanced by tater pickin’ since the age of three. He hadn’t accomplished much then, mostly got in the way, but his mother had assured him that his help was much appreciated and they would never have gotten done without it.

  Choosing a potato with his right hand, he sent it flying between his legs and into the bag with a deft flick of his wrist while his left hand was making the next selection. Left, right, left, right, gaining speed, left-right-left-right-leftrightleftrightleftright, faster and faster, his hands found a rhythm and became but a blur. With a stream of potatoes flying into the bag, he had a strong ability to concentrate, which he now focused on the ground in front of him, blocking out all else. He did not notice his mother’s and sister’s frequent looks to check his progress. Nor did he see their looks of determination as they put on all the speed they possessed, or the smile of resignation they shared while shaking their heads at each other when he first caught up with, and then passed them.

  With a smile and a finger on her lips to signal silence to Becky, Cormac’s mother began picking in Becky’s row, a few steps ahead of her. She picked half of the potatoes, leaving the other half for Becky coming up behind. With both women working the same row, Cormac was no longer pulling away from them. Catching up to him, though, was still out of the question.

  Laughing, Cormac stood up and turned around when he reached the end of his row, and then threw the last potato into the bag. Only then did he see the four men riding across the potato patch toward them. Caught up in the thrill and excitement of competition, Becky and her mother remained equally unaware of the riders.

  “Mother,” Cormac said, nodding his head toward the approaching riders.

  The women’s laughter stilled as their eyes followed his nod. The freshly plowed soil had muffled the horses’ hoofs, and the riders were less than fifty feet away. Their lack of concern for the damage being done to the potatoes by their horses was a clear statement of their intent and approaching trouble.

  The men were dirty and unshaven, their clothes worn and disheveled, and their bedrolls sloppily tied behind beat-up and uncared-for saddles. Badly in need of rest, their horses showed the results of overuse and neglect. All were scarred with sores kept open by the frequent misuse of spurs.

  Mrs. Lynch paled as their situation became evident. Her husband was a mile away, and they were unprotected. Frequently, he had warned her to keep the rifle close to her at all times.

  “Hopefully you’ll never need to use it,” he had said. “There aren’t a lot of people in these parts yet, and our farm is far off the beaten path. Even the Indians don’t come around this neck of the woods since Red Cloud signed the Laramie Treaty for the Sioux and the Black Hills now belong to them. It’s very peaceful out here, but the country is far from settled.

  “There may come a time when you’ll need a gun, and if you do, you’ll need it right then and there; you’ll not likely have time to fetch it.” Lulled by the peacefulness that had become their life, try as she might, she just could not take the warning seriously. To appease her husband, she had learned how to use it and could shoot straight if she didn’t have to shoot too far. Although she carried it around with her, it was awkward and heavy and usually left leaning against something in her vicinity: a tree, a rock, a sack of potatoes, or it remained in the rifle scabbard on her saddle. It was there now, under the tree at the far end of the field. If only she had listened to him.

  A huge, filthy, fat, and ugly man with a large, jagged scar running down the side of his face from his forehead to his chin rode a few feet in front of the others. He smiled a nasty smile, showing crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. Cormac’s mother knew the breath coming out of that mouth would be vile.

  “This is your lucky day, lady,” he snarled at her. Then, turning his head and nodding toward Becky, he told the other riders, “You can have her. This one’s all mine.”

  “Run kids!” Amanda Lynch screamed, and broke toward the rifle. It was too far away, but she had to try. Running had always come easily for her. She had won many foot races against her girlfriends in the eastern schools she had attended, but that had not been in the soft dirt of a freshly plowed potato field.

  The man’s horse was too small for him and near exhaustion from carrying his weight too far and too fast with too little rest, but it was still faster than Cormac’s mother, and it quickly cut her off. No matter which way she tried to run, the horse was in front of her. It had, at one time, been a good cattle-cutting horse. Like a cat toying with a caught bird, the man was toying with her, knowing he could do anything he wanted, whenever he wanted. Becky screamed behind her. A realist, she accepted the fact that she would not be allowed to get to the gun. She stopped trying to run and faced her tormentor.

  “Please,” she begged. “You and your men can do anything you want to me, and I’ll do whatever you want if you’ll leave my daughter alone.”

  Her tormentor reined his horse to a stop in front of her and looked down, his eyes slowly ravaging up and down her body.

  “Lady,” he growled, “I’m going to do anything I want to you anyway, and you’ll damn well do anything I tell you. And you ain’t goin’ to be so damned prissy-purty when I’m done with ya. Women like you always think you’re so damned special and don’t want anything to do with people like me. Well, today you’re going to have a lot to do with me. ’Sides, taint likely they’d stop even if I was to tell them to. They seem to be having a little fun of their own. Look at ’em.”

  She became aware of Becky’s hysterical crying and the men’s laughter; she turned to look, and her heart broke. One of the men was tearing away Becky’s clothing while the other two held her, groping the bared parts of her body as they became available. Becky was struggling and trying to pull away, kicking at anything that came within reach.

  “Now it’s you and me,” the fat man snarled.

  Spurring the horse deeply reopened the dried blood on its sides and sent it leaping forward, knocking Cormac’s mother to the ground. Before she could regain her feet, the man was off his horse, clamping her wrist in a steely grip with one hand and tearing at her clothes with the other.

  Amanda Lynch was petite, standing but five foot one on her tiptoes, but she was agile and had the strength that comes with years of long, grueling hours in the fields. She aimed a knee between his legs and the fingernails of her free hand at his face. Not the nails of a pampered and manicured city woman, these were nails hardened by the leeching of minerals from the soil caught under them while in the fields and the rays of the strong Dakota sun beating on them hour after hour. They were the nails of a hardworking countrywoman. He was expecting her knee and side-stepped it, but with furious strength she raked her nails down hard, and like knives, they cut deeply into the flesh, sending rivers of blood gushing down his face.

  “Damn you,” he swore, and swung his huge fist at her face. The punch smashed in her mouth and nose, sending her near unconsciousness and leaving her hovering there, unable to move, but distantly aware of more smas
hing blows knocking her head back and forth, her clothes being ripped from her body, atrocious acts being done to her, and Becky’s cries of pain.

  Cormac did not know what to do. His was a life that had never known violence. Protected by loving parents and an older sister who thrived on caring for him, he had never known anything but love and kindness. He stood frozen as he watched his mother’s vain attempt to run. But when the men grabbed Becky, he ran to help. One of the men hit him with a hard backhand, sending him reeling into darkness.

  When he regained consciousness, he could see a giant of a man doing horrible things to his mother and two other men holding Becky down while a third was on top of her. Both women were naked, and he could hear their whimpering. Rising from the ground, he ran unnoticed to the pile of carefully chosen rocks he had collected yesterday while taking his rest at lunch. All smooth, all nearly round, and all about the size of an egg . . . good throwing stones.

  Although his pa had taught him how to use a pistol, a rifle, and a shotgun when he was knee-high to a small Indian, he wasn’t allowed to use them without his pa along, so he used rocks—and sometimes in the winter, a frozen dirt clod—to hunt rabbits and squirrels. He tracked them to their hidey-holes and waited for them to show themselves. Cormac had a good eye and rarely missed. Sometimes his mother had to ask him to please stop for a while because they were getting tired of rabbit and squirrel stew, and his pa would tan his hide if he killed an animal that wasn’t for eating.

  Quickly selecting three stones to hold in his right hand and one for his throwing hand, he ran, still unnoticed, to within twenty feet of the men attacking Becky. With no warning, he threw the first rock as hard as he could, hitting exactly where he had aimed, the side of the head of the man on top of Becky. The man collapsed on top of her.