Black Hills (9781101559116) (26 page)

On one Sunday, Laurie was waiting for him at the corral with her Paint saddled and ready.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile. “It's a beautiful morning and an early ride sounded great. I thought I would tag along with you, if that's alright.”

“Sure. Let me throw a saddle on Horse, and we'll get going.”

As he was finishing the task, she called to him as he was stepping into the stirrup. “I'll race you to the river.” Taking off before he was in the saddle, she went out of the corral at a gallop and turned east. The river was two miles from the ranch buildings and served as their eastern property line. Horse was on the move while Cormac was still mounting, and Lop Ear was right behind.

Her Paint, Dandy, was fast. Cormac had seen her handily beat her brother's horse the first day he had arrived, but he was sure the Paint was no match for his duo. His early Sunday morning running rides had gone unnoticed with the other hands usually sleeping off their Saturday night trip to town.

Laurie was proud of her horse, and Cormac, not wanting to show her up and make her feel bad, held Horse back; besides, it was more fun to have her in front of him where he could watch her. Horse didn't care for that even a little bit, and kept trying to grab the bit in her teeth. She wanted to show that black-and-white horse what running was all about. Every time Lop Ear started to get ahead, Cormac called him back. He wanted to keep the race close. Of course Laurie was the first to the river where she pulled up, laughing.

“Those big ole fancy horses of yours aren't so much. I knew Dandy could beat them.”

“She is a good runner; I gotta give her that,” he told her. He wasn't lying. She probably would outrun most other horses, just not his.

Laurie stepped down and led Dandy along the river to cool her down. Cormac walked beside her, and Lop Ear and Horse followed along behind. Laurie kept looking back at them.

“I've watched them follow you all over the ranch, and I can't get over it. They're like puppies. How do you get them to do that?”

“I had nothing to do with it. It's their own idea.”

The river had narrowed with water rippling over the rocks near the shore, and the sun was shining warmly on the grass. The only sounds were from the chuckling water and a few birds singing in the branches of the Ponderosa Pines that were filling the air with the sweet pine scent of sap running in the warmth of the morning sun.

“Let's stop for a while to enjoy the sunshine,” Laurie suggested, while tying Dandy to a lower tree branch in such a way as to allow her to graze. Laurie walked down and stretched out on her back on the grass by the river with her hands behind her head. The blue jeans and long-sleeved blouses she normally wore fit her especially well, but Cormac couldn't remember having previously seen the ones she was wearing today. They were tighter even than normal, her blouse only just managing to stay together.

Cormac sat down beside her. “How long have you had Dandy?”

She smiled up at him for a long moment, her eyes sparkling with excitement and her face flushed. The strength of the thread holding the buttons onto her blouse and the very fabric itself were being severely tested as her bosom swelled with every accelerated breath. She asked him softly, “Do you really want to talk about horses?”

Cormac knew what she meant, and no, he really didn't want to talk about horses. She had grown into an extremely attractive woman with an abundant body made to please any man; the thought of unbuttoning those buttons had been full on his mind for some time.

He had frequently heard the hands discussing her looks and shape, and they all agreed that she and her parents had their caps set for Cormac. They figured her pa's wedding present would be a section of the Flying H upon which they could build a ranch. Cormac was glad he had some money in the bank with which to do it.

Cormac had always made little of their talk and laughed off the suggestion with a wave of his hand, but here it was. She was offering herself to him on a soft carpet of green grass under a clear blue Montana sky, with the soft lighting of the early-morning sun, a sweet pine fragrance in the air, and the music of the chuckling river nearby, almost as if the location had been carefully preselected. Her full lips looked mighty soft and inviting.

From time to time, a hand or a cowboy in town had tried to capitalize on the freeness of her spirit, only to find her flirty ways a charade. She was merely having fun, and like learning the range of a new rifle, after being a slender flat-chested adolescent who had suddenly developed abundantly overnight, she was experimenting with the range, power, and effects of her recently acquired figure. She would, however, not be lain down until she found her life's mate. Now she had made her choice and was going after him, all guns firing.

Cormac had fantasized about such a moment. He wasn't sure exactly how to do what was obviously expected of him, but he was certain he was going figure it out. Apparently it was something that comes natural. He had refused such offers before, but never from a woman such as Laurie Haplander. With Laurie, he realized, it was more than a physical attraction; he liked her a lot. They laughed a lot and enjoyed each other's company. She was an exciting, vibrant, and desirable woman, yet he was hesitant.

He recalled overhearing a conversation between his mother and Becky late one night when they had thought him to be asleep. His mother had revealed that she and their father had never gotten personal until they married. Cormac felt that to be a value worth honoring; it shouldn't just be recreational, he thought, but between two people with special feelings for each other; he believed that. But he and Laurie did have special feelings toward each other. But even that wasn't the main gist of it. So what was his problem? What was his hesitance? Why wasn't he already claiming his moment instead of thinking it to death?

Looking down at her smiling eager face surrounded by thick golden-blonde hair and wearing the look that had driven men insanely out of their minds for centuries, he found himself wondering why not. Wondering what in the world was wrong with him. Wondering if somehow, something in his violent past had affected him in some strange way. Wondering how she would look with red hair, or maybe a handful of freckles sprinkled across her face? . . . or if she was taller and her smile was a little brighter white? Wondering if... Damn! . . . Damnit, damnit, damnit! . . . Lainey! . . . Lainey Damn Nayle! . . . Damn that woman! She didn't want him anyway. Why couldn't she just get out of his mind and leave him the hell alone?

But, he had to stop this; he couldn't let it go any further: it wasn't fair to Laurie. She wasn't just offering the obvious, she was offering a lifetime with a home and kids, and arguing and making-up, getting up before dawn, working until long after dark, taking care of him when he was sick, crying with him when he failed, and a white picket fence with flowers in the yard and a vegetable garden. She was planning forever. The other hands were right; her father would most probably give them land for a ranch as part of the package. By agreeing to what she was offering today, he would be agreeing to the rest. But, he wasn't ready to do that, and he couldn't not tell her. He turned away.

“I'm sorry, Laurie,” he said simply. “Any man in his right mind would jump at what you are offering me, but it wouldn't be fair to you. I like you a lot and think about you a lot, sometimes in the middle of the night in ways I can't tell you about. And I've thought of this moment, but now that it's here, I can't do it.”

“What?” Surprise registered across Laurie's face. “What's the matter, Mack? What's wrong with me?”

Cormac couldn't look at her. “Absolutely nothing, Laurie,” he answered, shaking his head. “Not one single thing. In fact, I can tell you a great many things that are wonderful about you and not one single thing bad. But to go with you to where this is leading us, you deserve someone who loves you, and I was just this moment forced to realize that I am not that someone.”

“My pa loved one woman in his whole life, and I guess it's going to be the same with me.”

Cormac took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Unfortunately for me, my ‘one woman' can't stand the sight of me. I like you a lot, but I'm not in love with you in the way you want me to be, and it wouldn't be fair to you to let you go on thinking I am. There's a woman back in the Dakota Territory that I just can't seem get out of my mind. I'm sorry.”

First she stared at him in disbelief, and then she sat staring into the river with tears flowing freely down her cheeks as her body shook with silent sobbing. Presently, she numbly stumbled her way to Dandy, and they rode back to the ranch in dismal silence.

Feeling nearly as miserable as she, Cormac could think of nothing to say that she would want to hear, and accordingly, said nothing. When they got to the ranch, still without speaking, she slapped his hands away as he tried to unsaddle Dandy for her. He remembered Lainey kicking his hands away from tucking in her blanket. He seemed to have that effect on women.

Going to the bunkhouse, Cormac rolled up his belongings and left.

“Tell your family good-bye for me, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt her,” he told a surprised Josh on the way out the door to where Horse and Lop Ear were waiting.

Josh bristled, “Did you touch her? She doesn't do much around here but flirt with the hands, but she doesn't need you taking advantage of her. If you laid a hand on her, I'll . . .”

“No,” Cormac cut in, “I did not take advantage of her.”

He strapped the pack on Horse, and with his bedroll behind the saddle and a quick look at the house, rode out of the ranch yard. Laurie was simply standing forlornly on the porch between her parents with her arms hanging by her sides, as he rode away. Any money he had coming, Mr. Haplander would deposit into the bank—or he wouldn't.

If what he had done, or not done, in not taking advantage of her vulnerability was the right thing, why did he feel so terrible? Life was complicated and not for the weak.

With no destination in mind, he turned east. He had been hearing more talk of gold in the Black Hills. Maybe he could dodge the Indians and go hit a strike of some kind and get rich. Mid-day, he made a dinner camp with a small smokeless fire hidden from unwanted guests a short distance from a stream. There wasn't much in his pack; he should have gone into Virginia City for supplies, although there was still a mite of coffee, sugar, salt, and some flapjack makin's, and he knew how to hunt. He would have to make do. He did not want to explain why he was leaving.

With Horse and Lop Ear leisurely grazing their way to the stream, Cormac came out of his thinking-about-Laurie induced trance when the coffee boiled over and sizzled on the fire. As he reached across the fire to retrieve the pot, a voice came from behind him.

“You hold right still now, so I don't miss. I'm going to be the man who killed Mack Lynch, the Dakota gunfighter.”

Cormac faked a quick right step, spun left, drew, and fired three times in quick succession. With no time to aim, he had to fire on the spin as soon as the gunman came into view. Not being able to depend on just one shot, he spread three and hoped for the best. Two of his shots hit their mark. It was the kid that had watched him shoot Ghago and his men in Virginia City.

Cormac walked to where the body lay. A kid, most likely with a father and mother waiting at home for him. A mother who had held him and loved him and had dreams for him. And now she would cry for him. Cormac sat down on a nearby log and stared at the dead boy. He was responsible for that. Cormac Lynch. Cormac Lynch had killed a teenage boy. He dug out his makin's and rolled a smoke.

When suppertime came, Cormac was still sitting on the log. His eyes burned and his throat was raw from too many cigarettes and his lungs hurt. How could this have happened? A young man had died at his hand because some worthless people had ridden out of the hills and taken Cormac's life from him, and his father's life, and his mother's life, and his sister Rebecca's life, and the children she might have had.

No more plans did they get to make. No children did Becky get to have or teach how to tie their shoes, or kiss their owies, or make breakfast for and celebrate birthdays with. No times did she get to lay in her husband's arms in bed late at night and look out the window at the stars. And his parents did not get to hold Becky's children, and kiss them goodnight and see them excited when their grandparents came to visit. Death was very final. And now Cormac Lynch had taken another life. Maybe Lainey's attitude was right after all. Maybe she was right to not want him around.

The kid must have somehow learned where he worked and waited for him to leave the Flying H. So now Cormac Lynch was a gunfighter, not a reputation he wanted. He could change his name, he reckoned, but it would just happen again under the new name, making a name change again necessary. Times were changing with most of the country relying on judges, juries, and executioners, but frequently on the frontier, the gun was still the final word.

Cormac briefly considered changing his name but decided against it. He was and would always be, the son of John and Amanda Lynch, brother to Rebecca Lynch, and that's just the way it was going to be. Mr. Cormac Lorton Lynch and the rest of the world were just going to damn well have to deal with it. This kind of thing was apparently going to be a condition of life, and he would just have to deal with that, too; he would have to be ready.

“Well you might, boy,” his pa would have said. “Well you might.”

When his tobacco was gone, Cormac tied the kid across his horse and took him to the sheriff in Virginia City. The kid's one shot had burned Cormac's right forearm wrist to elbow, proving that it had been self-defense. Cormac got a bath and a room at the Virginia City hotel. That night he dreamed of lying next to Lainey on the grass beside a creek and woke up wishing he had dreamed just a few minutes longer. It had been looking like it was going to have a completely different ending. The next day he bought plenty of supplies and headed south; he had to go someplace and east was Black Hills chock-full of Indians, west was a whole range of mountains, and north was Canada. That only left south.