Black Hills (9781101559116) by Rod Thompson Page A

wasn’t anything for him to worry about. It was someone else’s problem. Just keep him out of it. He had seen all he wanted of bad guys.
    His pa always told him, “Take care of your horse first.” He removed the saddle and gear from the horses, and then, with a cut-off shovel brought along for just such a purpose, broke the ice from the stream and cleared an area of snow down to the brown frozen grass underneath for the horses to eat. After they had time to roll and drink, he slipped hackamores on them with ropes long enough to let them graze, gave them a quick brushing, and checked their shoes for stones. A small stone lodged in a shoe could cripple a horse and lay it up for days, if not weeks.
    That chore finished, he built a double-handful-sized fire and had two large cups of coffee to wash down some thick-sliced bacon along with some biscuits Lainey had made. Mrs. Schwartz had taught her well, although Cormac liked to tease her that she couldn’t cook. He rubbed the back of his head while he remembered the previous Christmas. She and Mrs. Schwartz had split up kitchen duties and Lainey’s job was to cook the goose Mr. Schwartz had shot the day before.
    â€œLoooks like we both ready to put on the feed bag,” he remembered Mr. Schwartz saying when the two of them had sat down at the table while the women were still setting it. “Which you like betta? The white meat or dark meat.”
    Knowing Lainey had just left the kitchen area and would be walking behind him close enough to hear, Cormac had answered, “It don’t much matter. If Lainey’s cookin’ it, it’s all gonna be dark meat.”
    She had made his ears ring with a smack to the back of his head. But both women could cook up a storm, and he was going to miss that. He was not looking forward to living off his own cooking. He had woefully little experience in that department, and he would miss picking on Lainey.
    Using his slicker as a ground cloth, Cormac spread his bedroll and crawled in. Lop Ear would sound the alarm if they had visitors. The ground was icy cold and hard beneath him. His pa had taught him how to deal with that, but he did not want to spend time building a wide fire, letting it burn down, and then scraping it away to the warm earth on which to put his bedroll. He was tired enough that he didn’t think the cold was going to bother him much. It didn’t.
    Using his saddle for a pillow, he pulled the blanket over his head, allowing his warm breath to act as a heater, and was asleep immediately, only to wake right up again thinking he had forgotten something. Actually it was two somethings. After getting Lop Ear’s bridle and stuffing it into the front of his coat to warm the steel bit for the morning, he pulled his gun, and with it in hand, let the lights go out again.
    It was the latter part of dusk when Lop Ear snorted Cormac awake. He came out of his bedroll in a hurry. It scared him to realize he had slept so sound and heard nothing all day. His pa had taught him to sleep light on the trail.
    Some brush popped. The light was poor, but he could just make out a horse coming through the trees. He drew back behind four trees growing closely together, his gun still in his hand. The horse turned out to be a large deer. The winter had been very cold with an overabundance of snow, forcing animals to range far from their home territories for food. His camp was downwind from the deer, and the deer had not yet caught their scent.
    Some fresh meat to begin his trip would be good. He cocked the pistol inside his heavy coat to muffle the sound and braced his arm against the tree, aiming for where the deer’s head was going to be.
    The unsuspecting deer moseyed out of the heavy brush into the clearing to stop there, standing dead still, suddenly suspicious, with its head held high, smelling the breeze. It was a beautiful eight-point buck, bigger than Cormac had expected, and his gun-sight was