Black Hills (9781101559116) Read online

  “What the hell?” one of the men lying beside Becky exclaimed, his hand on her bare chest and his back to Cormac. He rolled over to face Cormac and started to his feet, but a rock square between the eyes put him back to the ground. The man lying on the other side of Becky, with his hand also on her chest, came up with a gun and fired as Cormac launched another stone. Cormac fell into a heap.

  Sometime later, he heard the sound of a running horse and fought to rouse himself. He succeeded in regaining partial consciousness. Something warm was running across his face and dripping from his nose. He wiped at it, and his hand came away red with blood. With his fingers, Cormac gently traced the flow to its source and found a deep groove in his head running front to back above his left ear.

  Rising on one elbow, he was thrilled to see his pa racing toward them. He must have heard the shot and come a-runnin’. Cormac took heart at the sight of the rifle in his pa’s hand. A friend of his pa’s stopping by to visit once had told him that his pa could shoot the eye out of a gnat at fifty paces. He would put a stop to this. But he couldn’t shoot without fear of hitting his wife or Becky. Galloping to within a few feet of Cormac’s mother, John Lynch hauled back on the reins and set the horse sliding to a stop on its haunches.

  “Take him boys!” the fat man ordered. “I’m busy.” Before the horse had come to a complete stop, John Lynch was off, his momentum carrying him a few running steps toward where the fat man was assaulting his wife.

  “You bastards!” he screamed as he staggered to a halt, raising his rifle, “I’ll kill y—” Rolling gunfire cut him off and echoed over the hills as three guns cut him to pieces and he collapsed to the ground.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” he got out weakly, with tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Rebecca.” John Lorton Lynch, along with all of his plans, hopes, and dreams for his family, died, and fourteen-year-old Cormac Lynch gratefully sunk into the darkness of oblivion.

  Silence and stillness blanketed the valley. There was no movement in the air or birds singing in the tree. With no breeze to cool its effects, the gentle, warm morning sun had risen into the sky to become a blistering ball of Dakota fire. Stubborn dew hiding in the ruts of the plowed field and on shaded blades of grass under the tree had been quickly baked away, and the freshly plowed, rich, dark soil was now scorched dry and crumbly. The only movement was the growth of the tall grass covering the valley and the surrounding hills stretching upward in its relentless quest for the sun.

  In states with mountains rising to thirteen or fourteen thousand feet, they wouldn’t be called hills . . . more like bumps. In Dakota, there were hills, and then there were the Black Hills. At a little more than 7,000 feet, they were inhabited by the Oglala Sioux Indians who shared hunting privileges with the Cheyenne and, occasionally, the Arikara Indians, whose home was normally at the mouth of the Cheyenne River. The many pine trees created an appearance of darkness from a distance generating the name: the Black Hills, Paha Sapa to the Indians.

  The balance of the Dakota Territory remained mostly flat with small rolling hills, sometimes in groups, spasmodically straining upward out of the flatness of the Great Plains to press against the bottom side of the grass like a rock under a rug with occasional trees here and there. It was in just such terrain that John Lynch had chosen to build his farm and raise his family.

  In these surroundings, Cormac slowly became aware that his eye was open. One eye was pressed downward against a potato where his head had fallen; the other was open. Open and staring at Becky’s naked, twisted, and bloody body. He tried to close it. He did not want to have to look, but the eye would not do his bidding. Twice the distance away and a little to the side was his mother’s body—a short distance farther, his father’s. With a terrible, sickening sense of loss, Cormac knew they were all dead. Why wasn’t he? He remembered the darkness encircling him and gratefully thinking he was dying. Why had he not?

  Dazed and numb, Cormac slowly sat up, dizziness and excruciating pain in his head making him sick to his stomach. He closed his eyes against the waves of nausea and vomited heavily and frequently. Gently, his fingers probed the side of his head and found it covered with dried blood. He found the deep groove from the bullet, and on the ground, a dried pool of more blood. Groaning, he weakly staggered to his feet; only then did he think about the men. Where were they?

  Carefully, Cormac looked around the valley, moving his head very slowly, afraid of more pain. The men were gone, only their used-up horses remained; too tired to wander, they were taking advantage of the respite from overuse to rest and graze on the rich grass the best they could while bridled with steel bits in their mouths. Cormac could see that the horses he had hobbled and his father’s horse had all been taken. Strangely, he felt no relief at the men’s absence. Neither had he felt any fear, he realized; neither then, nor now.

  He just felt numb, like an observer looking at a photograph in one of his mother’s many books, which she used to educate him. But this was a horrible, grotesque photograph at which he did not want to look; he did not want to see. He wanted to close the book and have to look no longer; but this was not a photograph, this was real, and there on the ground were his mother, his pa, and his sister, petite and pretty seventeen-year-old Rebecca May Lynch: Becky. She had loved the name Rebecca, and Cormac was the only person she tolerated calling her Becky.

  How could this have happened? They had been minding their own business, working in the fields and laughing. The sunshine had been warm and friendly on the beginning of a beautiful day. He remembered hearing the birds in the tree. Tomorrow they would have been taking the potato harvest into town and picking up supplies. His mother and Becky were planning to get some material for new dresses while, as always, he looked at the new saddles in the back of the store and dreamed of someday buying his own. His pa would probably have got some store-bought candy for him and Becky. Suddenly, everything had changed. Everything was gone. Four strangers had simply ridden into their lives and taken away everything. How could this possibly have happened? Cormac Lynch did not understand. What right did they have to do that?

  He resolved himself to go to Becky. Her resistance to what had been happening to her was evident in the scuffed and gouged soil surrounding her. She had fought ferociously. The more she had resisted, the more she had been beaten, yet she never stopped fighting. There were bruises covering most of her body, front and back; and her face, once so gently pretty and so quick to smile and laugh, had been smashed almost beyond recognition. Her teeth were twisted in her mouth—some were missing, and blood covered most of her upper body.

  “Why?” he screamed out. “Why did you do this?”

  He avoided looking at her nakedness as he covered her with the largest pieces of her dress that he could find intact. Then, with immense dread, he went to his mother. What had been done to her was even more horrendous. Her face and body were a puffy round mass of torn flesh; there was blood over much of her body. Her eyes had swollen shut; and the sweet, soft lips that had kissed Cormac so many times, were mashed into her mouth where her teeth should have been. Her also naked body had been twisted perversely to satisfy the desires of a hideous monster.

  Stunned at the violence, Cormac moved mechanically, straightening her body and covering it; he kissed her softly, as he had Becky, and moved to his father. It was almost a pleasure to see that his father, even though he was dead, still looked like his father. Stretching out on the ground beside him, Cormac laid his head on his father’s massive chest. So strong his father had been, so eager to rise and begin work each day, always whistling, always happy to tease his children and their mother whenever the opportunity presented itself. Now he was dead—and cold.

  Cormac remained there a long while, remembering the happy times and laughter their family had shared, along with their dreams and plans for the future. He was avoiding, he knew, what had to come next and what he had to do. He had to bury them.

  The sun was getting low in the sky and the shadows lengthening whe
n Cormac reluctantly rose. He would bury them under the tree. It would be difficult to move the bodies that far, but it had been a happy spot for them. The only tree in the valley, it had shaded them while they shared lunches, talked, and laughed during field preparation, the planting, weeding, and harvesting; and if there was no lightning, provided them shelter from the rain. His parents had treated the breaks like picnics and made them fun. Under the tree, after eating, they had stretched out for mid-day naps before returning to work, they had made plans, they had laughed and enjoyed each other’s company, and under the tree the three of them would spend the rest of forever.

  Cormac worked as the sun went down and a full moon rose in its place, brightly illuminating everything with a pallid softness. What his pa had called the Milky Way made a soft trail across the sky. The horses were all-in and made no effort to elude him. He caught the nearest one to help move the bodies to the burial site.

  The sky was showing signs of light in the east when he tamped the last dirt onto his father’s grave. All the while avoiding looking at their nakedness, he had buried his mother first, and then Becky, so they would be covered. His father would have understood. He had always told Cormac to take care of the women first.

  Crawling onto his mother’s grave feeling hollow and weak, his strength drained, he collapsed with the realization coming to him that he had not cried. He wondered about that. His family had been horribly, viciously murdered, leaving it up to him to bury them, and yet he had not cried. His insides felt dead, filled with a sick and terrible empty numbness. He should have cried, he thought, and the thinking made him feel guilty.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I love you.” Cormac Lynch slept.

  CHAPTER 2

  After having ridden only a few miles from the Lynch place, the outlaws came upon a meandering, tree-lined creek.

  “Hey, Gator.” Raunchy laughed. “Let’s stop and have a drink. Man, oh man, oh man, that was somethin’, weren’t it? Those women were sure somethin’, weren’t they? Right purty little things.”

  “For once in your life, you got yourself a good idea,” the fat man responded. “I need to wash out these gouges that bitch gave me anyway. I sure taught her a thing or two. She won’t be clawing anyone else like that.”

  Nicknamed for an alligator he had killed with his bare hands while escaping through the swamps from a Florida prison, George Milar had been on the wrong side of the law all of his life. Six inches over six feet tall, he would have tipped the scales at over three hundred pounds had he ever felt the need to get on one. He didn’t care what he weighed. By the time he was ten years old, he had already decided he would do whatever the hell he wanted, and that included eating anything he wanted, as much as he wanted, when he wanted.

  Gator didn’t like rules and cared not one whit what other people thought. His three hundred-plus pounds of bulk concealed massive muscles that had always bulled him out of any situation. His weight was also a horse killer; he rode them until they could no longer walk. He kicked them, beat them, spurred them, and cussed at them, and when they could go no farther, he would steal another and with his huge fists, hammer anyone who complained, laughing and enjoying every minute while he did it.

  He stepped down from the horse he had recently stolen, backhanding it on the side of the head when it shied away at the sudden transfer of weight from the saddle to the stirrup that twisted the cinch strap painfully around its girth.

  “Pete,” he ordered. “You and the Mex rustle up some grub.”

  The “Mex” looked at him with hate-filled eyes. The way Gator said “Mex” made it sound vulgar. Gator knew the man did not like the slur on his race and used it to put him down at every opportunity. Someday, the “Mex” was going to introduce Gator to the pointed end of the Mexican knife he wore on his belt. Until then, he would put up with the mistreatment because of the protection it afforded him.

  Nobody wanted to tangle with Gator, and that provided the group with both protection and women. Their shared taste for abuse of women was the glue that held their small band together. They all liked to kill and did so for any reason, or for no reason, but their need to abuse women was their mainstay. Sometimes they kept a woman with them while they traveled, sharing her body either as a group or for their individual sadistic pleasure, until they tired of her; or until she became too ugly from the beatings, in which case they killed her and left her to rot. The “Mex” had been hopeful of keeping the last two. He would have relished enough time to enjoy them more slowly, maybe cut them a little and watch them bleed, but Gator’s woman had somehow managed to stuff enough dirt into her mouth to choke herself to death without Gator noticing until it was too late. The other went hysterical when she realized what had happened and attacked them, screaming, biting, kicking, and scratching, and wouldn’t stop until she was finally beaten to death.

  Too bad, he thought, shaking his head. What a waste to lose them so soon.

  Gator removed a large bottle of whiskey from his saddlebag. “We’ll have us a couple of drinks then go find where those farmers lived. If we give the horses their heads, they’ll find their way home. Most farmers keep some whiskey around for medicine, and we’ll be needin’ some more ’fore long. And who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and find another daughter or two, wouldn’t that be a kick?” They ate and drank until they passed out, talking about what they would have done to the women if they hadn’t died.

  The sun was again high in the sky when Cormac awoke to the sound of the horse stomping her feet and blowing. Tied to a low-hanging branch, the large, slate-colored grulla mare with a dark head, white-blazed face, and matching white stockings, with which he had moved the bodies had eaten all the grass in the small area within her reach and was stretching as far as the reins would allow. Grazing close by were the outlaw’s other horses, so uncared for that the saddles and bridles, as badly mistreated as the horses, had not been removed.

  The Lynch horses and gear had obviously been taken because they were in much better condition. Cormac’s pa knew the benefits of well-bred animals and the importance of taking care of one’s property. Cormac noticed these things on some subconscious level. Consciously, he was numb from the shock and horror and the great loss of the previous day. Slowly he rose and walked to the grulla, untied her reins, and flipped them over her head. Nickering lowly, she extended her nose to nuzzle his chest. A horse lover like his pa, Cormac appreciated the gesture. It was as if she understood he was in pain and was giving support in the only way she knew how, along with her thank you for being treated kindly.

  Cormac automatically reciprocated by holding her large head in his two hands. Leaning his forehead against her face, his nose against her nose, the two of them breathed each other’s air and smelled each other’s breath in the same manner in which Cormac had done so many times before with his pa’s horse, Lop Ear. He was reaching now for the comforting closeness he so desperately needed. The grulla seemed to understand and nickered softly once more.

  With their faces together, Cormac hugged her head for a time and then returned to sit on his mother’s grave, wanting to remain as close to her as possible, wanting not to think, not knowing or caring what he should do next. With his father’s grave on one side of him and Becky’s on the other, he was at a total and uncaring loss for a plan of action. Three wonderful, happy, giving people had been horribly and painfully murdered, his happy existence forever changed.

  Cormac could not be still. His lips began to tremble and his body began to shake; his emotion would no longer be denied. His mind and heart wracked with pain, his body began to heave, and his muscles convulsed uncontrollably. He curled first into a tight fetal position and began moaning and sobbing hysterically, rocking back and forth. Then, rolling over onto his knees, he began pounding the dirt with all of his strength, making loud, unintelligible moans and groans and yells and whimpers like those of a large animal dying in agony. The horses watched the strange actions of the human curiously until the sounds diminished
and finally ceased as Cormac, wounded, heartsick, and emotionally drained, once again passed into unconsciousness, and they returned to grazing.

  The sun inched across the sky until the graves were no longer shaded. The sun was hot, and Cormac Lynch reluctantly became aware of his surroundings. He sat up to get the sun out of his face and remained there for a time in an unthinking sickly stupor, staring without seeing. Presently it occurred to him that he had not taken care of the horses’ needs, and he was also becoming aware of a cold and terrible rage building in his gut, replacing the trembling sickness and sense of loss.

  Cormac arose with a purpose. He was fourteen years old and had much of his height; already eight or ten inches taller than Becky and his mother had been, he was beginning to fill out like his wide-shouldered and well-muscled pa. He had been carrying the daily workload of a man for more than a year—digging, wood chopping, barn cleaning, and shoveling manure—making him far stronger than an average fourteen-year-old. His pa had taught him about guns: how to use them, how to hit what he aimed at, when and when not to use them. This was the time to use them.

  You bastards! I’ll kill you! The last words he heard from his pa echoed in his mind. He would keep his pa’s promise. Cormac would find the bastards . . . and he would kill them.

  Cormac Lynch was of the Celtic heritage of his father, a people known for their horsemanship, and Cormac’s pa had taught him well about recognizing and caring for good horseflesh. He took down the pail of water from where it had been hung in the tree to shade and protect it. He rinsed his mouth, spit, and drank a few swallows, saving the rest for the horses.

  They knew what a bucket was and came easily to him. He gave each their share, talking to them and rubbing the knot between their ears while they drank. Each had been mistreated by humans and, at first, shied from his hand, but the smell of water won out. They drank eagerly and hesitantly allowed his touch.